LGBTQ History Mercedes de Acosta’s Here Lies the Heart and Her Relationships with Women in Hollywood 1960

Mercedes De Acosta

First Edition

De Acosta, Mercedes. Here Lies the Heart, 1960, recounts the writer’s life among prominent figures in Broadway, Hollywood, literature, and the arts, including her relationships with women whose public reputations were carefully guarded during the period. De Acosta, an American poet, playwright, and novelist, is now closely associated with LGBTQ history through her relationships and correspondence with women including Greta Garbo and Eva Le Gallienne. Published when she was seriously ill and financially strained, the memoir appeared at a time when public acknowledgment of same sex relationships could damage careers and personal reputations; its disclosures contributed to ruptures with several women in her circle, including Garbo and Le Gallienne. De Acosta’s surviving papers preserve earlier drafts of Here Lies the Heart, including a typescript dated circa 1938 and extensively revised material from circa 1960, documenting the memoir’s long development before publication.

De Acosta, Mercedes. Here Lies the Heart. London: Andre Deustch Limited, 1960. First edition. 372 pages. Bound in dark brown cloth hardcovers with gilt title on spine; as issued, no dust jacket; octavo. The memoir recounts De Acosta’s encounters and friendships within literary, theatrical, and motion picture circles from the 1920s through the 1940s and includes black and white illustrations of people in her life, among them Georgia O’Keeffe, Aldous Huxley, and Greta Garbo. Her association with Garbo, which began in the early 1930s, became the best known of her relationships, while the memoir’s treatment of intimate friendships with women drew particular controversy after publication.

Here Lies the Heart belongs to a small body of mid twentieth century autobiographical writing in which lesbian relationships and networks entered the public record indirectly, through memoir, personal recollection, and carefully limited disclosure rather than explicit declaration. Its publication also preserved De Acosta’s firsthand account of a social world linking Broadway, Hollywood, modernist writers, and artists across several decades. Spine with three 1 cm tears and front cover with a bumped corner; owner’s name in pen on front endpaper. Pages clean and bright. Overall in very good condition. This first edition preserves De Acosta’s own published account of relationships and cultural networks that later became central to the study of lesbian history in twentieth century American theater and film.

Item #19169

Price: $285.00