Radclyffe Hall

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Standard Name: Hall, Radclyffe
Birth Name: Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall
Nickname: John
Self-constructed Name: Radclyffe Hall
RH is best-known today for her landmark lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, 1928. But she herself explained that she waited until she had made a name for myself as an author . . . because I felt that it would . . . be difficult for an unknown writer to get a novel on congenital sexual inversion published.
Hall, Radclyffe. Radclyffe Hall’s 1934 Letter About The Well of Loneliness. Lesbian Herstory Educational Foundation.
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Her literary reputation was based first on her poetry but later, and more substantially, on her novels, particularly Adam's Breed.
Black and white photograph of Radclyffe Hall, shown from the waist up. She is wearing a man's suit and tie, and her short hair is slicked back. In her left hand she holds a small black dog.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Rose Allatini
Melanie Mills (Janet Melanie Ailsa Mills ), the friend with whom RA shared her life from the time she moved to Beckley, shared many of her interests too. Cyril Scott called Mills in...
Cultural formation Maya Angelou
At fifteen, having worried all her life about being too tall, MA read Radclyffe Hall 's The Well of Loneliness and became anxious that she might be, or might be developing into, a lesbian. She...
Textual Production Anna Livia
In this text Minnie and her family return somewhat changed. While all of Minnie's relatives have taken male lovers (all named John, perhaps in honour of the name by which Radclyffe Hall liked to be...
Textual Features Djuna Barnes
Structured as a monthly chronicle, Ladies Almanack is a satiric lesbian cosmology based on Natalie Barney and her circle in Paris. Among its characters are Patience Scalpel, based on Mina Loy , Lady Buck-and-Balk and...
Fictionalization Natalie Clifford Barney
NCB has been a magnet for biographers (recently as the subject with Romaine Brooks of Diana Souhami 's Wild Girls in 2004 and as a minor character in Joan Schenkar 's Truly Wilde: the Unsettling...
Textual Production Muriel Box
MB 's first contact with her future second husband arose out of correspondence about legal matters canvassed in this book.
Box, Muriel. Rebel Advocate. Victor Gollancz.
195
The work itself fulfilled the aim of Femina Books : to produce titles with...
Friends, Associates Vera Brittain
VB was one of forty witnesses marshalled by the defence counsel when Radclyffe Hall 's The Well of Loneliness was prosecuted for obscenity.
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus.
228
Textual Production Vera Brittain
VB published her last book, Radclyffe Hall : A Case of Obscenity?, an account of the Well of Loneliness obscenity trial commissioned by Muriel Box for her publishing company Femina Books .
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus.
514
Education Edith Craig
EC was educated first at a co-educational school run by Mrs Cole in Foxton Road, Earl's Court, London. This school, at which Edith became a boarder in 1883, had also been attended by...
Leisure and Society Edith Craig
Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge , who lived nearby, were among those who attended the Barn Theatre performances.
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell.
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Virginia Woolf 's letters to Vita Sackville-West reflect her interest in attending, though it is not...
Friends, Associates Edith Craig
In the early 1930s—when the persecution of lesbians in general and Radclyffe Hall in particular was raging in the wake of The Well of Loneliness trial—EC , Christopher St John , and Clare Atwood
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Daniels
The play is set in March 1983 in an outer London suburb.
Daniels, Sarah. Plays: One. Methuen.
234
It opens with Val (a married sister of the protagonist, Claire) in a psychiatric hospital, identifying herself with women of past centuries...
Intertextuality and Influence E. M. Delafield
The overbearing heroine, Clarissa, attempts to control the lives of her new husband and his children from an earlier marriage.
Powell, Violet. The Life of a Provincial Lady. Heinemann.
96
Secondary characters include two women, a novelist and an intellectual, who share a home...
Textual Production Zoë Fairbairns
ZF wrote the introduction to a new edition of Radclyffe Hall 's The Unlit Lamp, her first-written but second-published novel, dating from 1924.
Fairbairns, Zoë, and Radclyffe Hall. “Introduction”. The Unlit Lamp, Lester and Orpen Dennys.
Literary responses Isabella Ormston Ford
More recently, Chris Waters suggested that IOF 's novel offers a vitriolic indictment of the expectations that thwarted women's ambitions, in a way that anticipates Radclyffe Hall 's novel The Unlit Lamp.
Waters, Chris. “New Women and Socialist-Feminist Fiction: The Novels of Isabella Ford and Katharine Bruce Glasier”. Rediscovering Forgotten Radicals: British Women Writers 1889-1939, edited by Angela Ingram and Daphne Patai, University of North Carolina Press, pp. 25-42.
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She...

Timeline

1904: Madame C. de Broutelles founded the Prix...

Writing climate item

1904

Madame C. de Broutelles founded the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse, a prestigious French literary prize awarded by a jury of twelve women. A. Mary F. Robinson (an English writer living in France) was a co-founder.

1931: The Obelisk Press in Paris was established...

Writing climate item

1931

The Obelisk Press in Paris was established by Jack Kahane , in part to combat prudery in British publishing.

1965: Barrie and Rockliff publishers (formerly...

Writing climate item

1965

Barrie and Rockliff publishers (formerly James Barrie imprint) bought out both Herbert Jenkins Limited , publisher of P. G. Wodehouse , and Hammond, Hammond , publishers of Radclyffe Hall .

14 July 2006: The Bow Street Magistrates Court, one of...

Building item

14 July 2006

The Bow Street Magistrates Court , one of London's most famous courts, closed after dispensing justice for 267 years.

9 December 2006-17 July 2007: The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted...

Writing climate item

9 December 2006-17 July 2007

The National Portrait Gallery in London mounted an exhibition of photographs of women writers, mostly novelists, from 1920 to 1960.

Texts

Hall, Radclyffe. ’The World’ and other unpublished works of Radclyffe Hall. Editor Funke, Jana, Manchester University Press, 2016.
Hall, Radclyffe. ’Twixt Earth and Stars. J. and E. Bumpus, 1906.
Hall, Radclyffe. A Saturday Life. Arrowsmith, 1925.
Hall, Radclyffe. A Sheaf of Verses. J. and E. Bumpus, 1908.
Hall, Radclyffe. Adam’s Breed. Cassell, 1926.
Fairbairns, Zoë, and Radclyffe Hall. “Introduction”. The Unlit Lamp, Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1981.
Hall, Radclyffe. “Introduction”. Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall, edited by Joanne Glasgow, New York University Press, 1997.
Hall, Radclyffe. Le puits de solitude. Translators Troubridge, Una and Léo Lack, Gallimard, 1932.
Hall, Radclyffe. Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself. William Heinemann, 1934.
Hall, Radclyffe. Poems of the Past and Present. Chapman and Hall, 1910.
Hall, Radclyffe. Radclyffe Hall’s 1934 Letter About The Well of Loneliness. Lesbian Herstory Educational Foundation, 1994.
Hall, Radclyffe. Songs of Three Counties and Other Poems. Chapman and Hall, 1913.
Hall, Radclyffe. The Forge. Arrowsmith, 1924.
Hall, Radclyffe. The Forgotten Island. Chapman and Hall, 1915.
Hall, Radclyffe. The Master of the House. Jonathan Cape, 1932.
Hall, Radclyffe. The Sixth Beatitude. William Heinemann, 1936.
Hall, Radclyffe. The Unlit Lamp. Cassell, 1924.
Hall, Radclyffe, and Havelock Ellis. The Well of Loneliness. Jonathan Cape, 1928.
Hall, Radclyffe, and Havelock Ellis. The Well of Loneliness. Anchor Books, 1990.