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.
After 1924, EMF
turned from writing novels to social and political causes, in particular the issue of freedom of expression. In 1928 he campaigned against the suppression of Radclyffe Hall
's The Well of Loneliness...
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
Cultural formation
Winifred Holtby
Rumours that they were in a lesbian relationship circulated throughout their lifetime, and some scholars have also raised this possibility. At least some of WH
's stated views on sexuality implied a questioning of heterosexual...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jane Howard
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
Literary responses
E. M. Hull
Despite the novel's popular success on the one hand and detractors on the other, the popular newspapers . . . completely ignored E. M. Hull. She was not interviewed, nor did her name appear in...
Leisure and Society
Violet Hunt
VH
hosted luncheons for Radclyffe Hall
, Bram Stoker
, H. G. Wells
and others at the Writers' Club
in Bruton Street. She later claimed: It was the first really literary and journalistic women's...
Friends, Associates
Violet Hunt
VH
and Radclyffe Hall
began an extended, artistically-productive friendship.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
123-4
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).
The protagonist having been married and lost the custody of her child through divorce, is concerned when she contemplates re-marriage to guard against the same thing happening again. The character named Isabel Agate is modelled...
Friends, Associates
Naomi Jacob
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...
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 /...
In it, she describes herself as an emancipated, rebellious, and Angry Young Woman.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
The final phrase in this description claims for herself membership of a largely male literary movement of the 1950s-60s, whose recognized members...
