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.
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
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...