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.
CSJ
, Edith Craig
, and Tony Atwood
spent much time in the company of Radclyffe Hall
and Una Troubridge
, who were staying temporarily in Kent while their house was being renovated.
NJ
wrote a letter of appreciation to Radclyffe Hall
after The Well of Loneliness appeared in 1928. In January the following year she met Hall and Una Troubridge
when the former lectured in Southend (though...
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
With another member of the student company, Paul Scofield
, EJH
was invited to tea with Radclyffe Hall
and Una Troubridge
.
Howard, Elizabeth Jane. Slipstream. Macmillan.
89, 97-8
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
She and Forster began to know one another this year and became lifelong friends. He reviewed her books, and she his, and in defence of Radclyffe Hall
's The Well of Loneliness they wrote jointly....
Intertextuality and Influence
Violet Hunt
VH
published The Doll, a novel about child custody which includes a character inspired in part by her fellow writer Radclyffe Hall
(at this date a poet but not a novelist).
Other poems in the collection explore the power of language as well as the limits of communication. The poem Sign (about sign language) stresses that They did not see / the way she talked /...
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...
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury.
50-1
The lesbian love scenes sometimes parody Radclyffe Hall
's The Well of Loneliness.
Beauman, Nicola. A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39. Virago.
219
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury.
141
Intertextuality and Influence
Gwen Moffat
This book describes life in the women's army
and GM
's early, rackety non-army experiences, like milking cows and steering a sailing ship as the only sober member of the crew. Most vivid of all...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Renault
Homosexuals in British fiction had been portrayed mostly as sick, funny, or both since the Oscar Wilde
trials (1895). E. M. Forster
had kept his Maurice unpublished. Radclyffe Hall
had run into trouble. Virginia Woolf
