Who this author is remains unknown and it is assumed that the name Diana Frederics is a psdeudonym for the writer who published Diana: A Strange Autobiography in 1939. The status of the text is complicated by the fact that the book was also published in France in 1946, this time with the title Diana: roman, which suggests a fictional as opposed to an autobiographical account. In addition to the French edition of 1946, there was an edition published under the English title in India in 1939.

The text details the story of a young girl's coming to terms with her lesbianism. It utilizes sexological language and was prefaced, in its US edition, by sexologist Dr Victor Robinson. In contrast with other texts from this period, this one portrays a woman achieving a lesbian identity and fulfilment within a lesbian relationship rather than relinquishing or sublimating her lesbian desires. Written in the late 1930s, a period often considered a "wasteland" for lesbian literature, Diana is, as Lillian Faderman suggests, an "oasis."