For #LGBThistorymonth I will be posting an #lgbtq #womaninhistory every day. Today is Mercedes de Acosta, an American poet, playwright, and novelist. Her autobiography detailed her love affairs with some of the world’s most famous women.

De Acosta, the daughter of affluent Cuban immigrants, grew up in New York where, in the 1920s, she was well-known society figure and frequented drag clubs and speakeasies. She was a feminist and a tireless advocate for women’s rights and wrote in her memoir, “I believed…in every form of independence for women and I was…an enrolled worker for women’s suffrage.

De Acosta and her lover, Isadora Duncan were members of the rational dress movement, choosing to discard the restrictive, stereotypically feminine clothing of the time in favour of trousers. De Acosta is rumored to have once declared, “I can get any woman from any man.” Her list of lovers is long and includes Alla Nazimova, Eva Le Gallienne, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo. All of whom she wrote about in her 1960 tell-all autobiography, Here Lies the Heart.