ROBERTA COWELL'S STORY
First US edition of one of the earliest autobiographies published by a woman to have undergone sex reassignment surgery.
Very good plus in very good jacket.
Price: $1,250.00
ROBERTA COWELL'S STORY
"Since May 18th, 1951, I have been Roberta Cowell, female. I have become woman physically, psychologically, glandularly and legally."
While scholar Sandy Stone claims in her landmark 1991 essay "The Transsexual Empire Strikes Back" that Hedy Jo Star's I CHANGED MY SEX! (1962) was the "first fully autobiographical book" by a transgender person, that first is better claimed by Roberta Cowell, whose memoir appeared eight years earlier in both the UK and US. Stone's article distinguished between works like Star's or Cowell's and prior works like MAN INTO WOMAN by Lili Elbe (various editions, 1931-1933), which was heavily edited posthumously from diaries. Cowell's book therefore arguably represents just the second published work by a person to have successfully undergone SRS. It was preceded, as far as our research indicates, only by Michael Dillon's SELF — which was not autobiographical — eight years earlier.
Indeed, Dillon himself was instrumental in Cowell's transition. The two met after Cowell read Dillon's landmark work, which was "the first sustained argument for technologically mediated sex change" (Hausman). Cowell recounts in STORY: "Then came the surprise, a surprise so shattering that the scene will be crystal-clear in my memory for the rest of my life. He sat there, sucking at his pipe and toying with his coffee cup. He was silent for a minute or two, and I was idly wondering how long that beard of his had taken to grow. Suddenly, 'I don't really see why I shouldn't tell you,' he said, 'but five years ago I was a woman.' Such a possibility had never entered my head for one moment. As I looked at him now it seemed absolutely and utterly fantastic, quite unbelievable, but I was not then fully aware of all that modem medical science could do."
Dillon subsequently became the doctor to undertake the first of Cowell's gender confirmation surgeries, a procedure done under the strictest secrecy due to so-called "mayhem" laws. A subsequent surgery allowed Cowell to formally change her birth certificate, but after the initial publicity surrounding her transition, Cowell largely retreated from public life. However, she paid a heavy price: once a military officer, pilot, and successful professional race car driver, she struggled financially the rest of her life before dying in 2011 — her funeral reportedly attended by only six people.
An important work from a transgender pioneer. While we've handled the UK first a few times, this is the first we've encountered the US edition, which seems decidedly more scarce.
Read more: Sandy Stone, "The Transsexual Empire Strikes Back," in: Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity (Routledge 1991); Bernice L. Hausman, Changing Sex: Transsexualism, Technology, and the Idea of Gender, page 21.
The Object
First printing. New York: British Book Center, Inc, (1954). 8'' x 5.25''. Original full blue cloth. In original unclipped ($3.00) jacket. Illustrated in two inserted sections with black-and-white photographs. 208 pages. Contemporary owner inscription penned to front endpaper. A couple small, faint dampstains to rear panel, unobtrusive. Some edgewear, with spot rubbed away to foot of spine; crease to front flap. Bottom edge of boards a bit scuffed. Overall, bright and sound.
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