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This is
the twelfth in a series highlighting the best gay and lesbian authors from the
20th century (with a few before and after that period) who have recorded in
fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay people telling what life is, and
was, during an important time of history.
Eighty two years ago Radclyffe wrote and published an iconic, classic lesbian novel that was one, if not the first, novels that dealt openly with homosexuality. "The Well of Loneliness" is still being published, but
more importantly read, today. It is studied in schools not only as a
novel about lesbians in the early twentieth century but as a censgorship
court case brought in England citing obscenity though it didn't contain
explicit sex scenes.
Life
Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born in Bournemouth, Hampshire (now Dorset) in 1880, to a wealthy
philandering father and quarrelsome mother. Lonely while growing up (her parents
separated when she was a baby and she was virtually ignored by her mother and
stepfather), she was educated at King's College London, and then in
Germany.
Hall was a lesbian and described
herself as a "congenital invert", a term taken
from the writings of Havelock Ellis and other turn-of-the-century sexologists.
Having reached adulthood without a vocation, she spent much of her twenties
pursuing women she eventually lost to marriage.
Novels
Hall's first novel was The Unlit Lamp, the story of Joan Ogden, a
young girl who dreams of setting up a flat in London with her friend Elizabeth
(a so-called Boston
marriage) and studying to become a doctor, but feels trapped by her
manipulative mother's emotional dependence on her. Its length and grimness made
it a difficult book to sell, so she deliberately chose a lighter theme for her
next novel, a social comedy entitled The Forge. While she had used her full name for her early poetry collections, she shortened
it to M. Radclyffe Hall for The Forge. The book was a modest success,
making the bestseller list of John O'London's Weekly. The Unlit
Lamp, which followed it into print, was the first of her books to give the
author's name simply as Radclyffe Hall.
There followed another comic novel, A Saturday Life (1925), and then
Adam's Breed (1926), a novel about an Italian headwaiter who, becoming
disgusted with his job and even with food itself, gives away his belongings and
lives as a hermit in the forest. The book's mystical themes have been compared
to Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. It sold very well, was critically acclaimed, and won both the Prix Femina and the James Tait Black Prize, a feat
previously achieved only by E. M. Forster's A Passage to India.[
The Well of
Loneliness
Loneliness
Hall is best known for The Well of Loneliness, the only one
of her eight novels to have overt lesbian themes. Published in 1928, The Well of
Loneliness deals with the life of Stephen Gordon, a masculine lesbian who,
like Hall herself, identifies as an invert. Although Gordon's attitude toward
her own sexuality is anguished, the novel presents lesbianism as natural and
makes a plea for greater tolerance.
Although The Well of Loneliness is not sexually explicit, it was
nevertheless the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK, which resulted in all copies of
the novel being ordered destroyed. The United States allowed its publication
only after a long court battle. It is currently published in the UK by Virago, and by Anchor
Press in the United States.
The Well of Loneliness was number seven on a list of the top 100
lesbian and gay novels compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.
Later novels
An anonymous verse lampoon entitled
The Sink of Solitude appeared during the controversy over The
Well. Although its primary targets were James Douglas, who had called for
The Well's suppression, and the Home Secretary William
Joynson-Hicks, who had started legal proceedings, it also mocked Hall and
her book. One of the illustrations, which depicted Hall nailed to a cross, so
horrified her that she could barely speak of it for years afterward. Her sense
of guilt at being depicted in a drawing that she saw as blasphemous led to her
choice of a religious subject for her next novel, The Master of the
House.
At Hall's insistence, The Master of the House was published with no
cover blurb, which may have misled some
purchasers into thinking it was another novel about inversion. Advance sales
were strong, and the book made #1 on the Observer's bestseller list, but
it received poor reviews in several key periodicals, and sales soon dropped off.[16] In the United
States reviewers treated the book more kindly, but shortly after the book's
publication, all copies were seized—not by the police, but by creditors. Hall's
American publisher had gone bankrupt. Houghton Mifflin took over the rights, but
by the time the book could be republished, its sales momentum was lost.
In 1907 at the Homburg spa in Germany, Hall met Mabel Batten, a
well-known amateur singer of lieder. Batten (nicknamed "Ladye") was 51 to Hall's 27,
and was married with an adult daughter and grandchildren. They fell in love, and
after Batten's husband died they set up residence together. Batten gave Hall the
nickname John, which she used the rest of her life.
In 1915 Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's cousin, Una TroubridgeErnest Troubridge, and the mother of a young
daughter. Mabel Batten died the following year, and in 1917 Radclyffe Hall and
Una Troubridge began living together.[ The relationship
would last until Hall's death. In 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigré
Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her, which Troubridge painfully tolerated. Hall became involved
in affairs with other women throughout the years, possibly including blues singer Ethel Waters. (1887-1963), a
sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral
Hall lived with Troubridge in London and, during the 1930s, in the tiny town
of Rye, East
Sussex, noted for its many writers, including her contemporary, the
probably-gay novelist E.F. Benson. She died at age 63 of colon
cancer, and is interred at Highgate Cemetery in North London. The vault containing her remains is
in the Circle of Lebanon, half way round from the Egyptian Avenue entrance.
In 1930 Radclyffe Hall received the Gold Medal of the EichelbergherPEN club, the Council of the Society for Psychical Research and a fellow of the Zoological Society. Humane
Award. She was a member of the
Radclyffe Hall was listed at number sixteen in the top
500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper