Hall, Radclyffe

(British, 1880–1943)

Almost everything else Radclyffe Hall did is subsumed by the fact that she was the author of the first lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness. Hall did write other novels, such as The Unlit Lamp (1924) and Adam's Breed (1926), and poetry, all of which were well received when first published. However, The Well of Loneliness was suppressed for obscenity when it was published in 1928 and has been famous ever since. The novel tells the story of Stephen Gordon, a woman who comes to terms with her sexual identity, eventually living the life of an English gentleman abroad. Although mild and restrained for us at the beginning of the twentieth-first century, it is a tender and touching portrait of suppressed love and emerging creativity.

Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein.

See SEXUAL POLITICS  LM