One judge ruled that no reasonable person could say a book that condoned toleration of sexual inverts was not obscene, and ordered the books destroyed at the defendant’s cost. The book stayed banned in the UK until 1949 for defending "unnatural practices between women". (Hall’s writing style didn’t much appeal to modernist authors.) Though the supporters didn’t think The Well should be suppressed, that didn’t necessarily mean they thought it was superbly written. According to Woolf, the plan fell apart when Hall insisted the letter include her novel’s "artistic merit - even genius".
Eliot, Arnold Bennett, Vera Brittain, and Ethel Smyth. At one point, Virginia Woolf argued on her side and assembled a list of supporters of Hall’s right to have the book published, including T.S. Hall attempted to fight the censorship of her work, but was largely unsuccessful. The Well’s graphic sex scene in its entirety is “and that night they were not divided”), and more importantly, the government and courts found it obscene. His instincts had been correct: the public was shocked by it (though it was fairly easy to shock these people. Jonathon Cape, who had been hesitant about publishing a scandalous book, started with a small print of 1500 copies. As would become the trend in lesbian fiction, The Well was not a happy read.
She falls in love with Mary Llewellyn and the proceed to have a relationship while putting up with self-hatred, shame, social isolation and rejection. The Well was about an upper-class English woman named Stephen Gordon, who is raised as the boy her parents wanted (which “explained” her inversion). So far as I know nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before in fiction.” "I have put my pen at the service of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world.
In April, 1928, when she did find a publisher (Jonathon Cape), she told him the novel required complete commitment and she would refuse to alter a single word. Radclyffe Hall is famous for this controversial novel, the first published piece of lesbian fiction written in English (and/or, arguably, the first piece of transgender fiction written in English).Īfter writing The Well of Loneliness, Hall’s novel was turned down by three publishers who, although they praised the book, believed it was too controversial to sell. James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express newspaper ”I would rather put a phial of prussic acid in the hands of a healthy girl or boy than the book in question.”
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