Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Radclyffe Hall
-
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.
1-2
Her literary reputation was based first on her poetry but later, and more substantially, on her novels, particularly Adam's Breed.
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.
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.
31
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.