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, 1994.
1-2
Her literary reputation was based first on her poetry but later, and more substantially, on her novels, particularly Adam's Breed.
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...
Leisure and Society
Edith Craig
Radclyffe Hall
and Una Troubridge
, who lived nearby, were among those who attended the Barn Theatre
performances.
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, 1993, pp. 25-42.
31
She...
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...
Literary responses
Una Troubridge
Aside from her translations, UT
is largely remembered as the lover and amanuensis of Hall
. She herself is partly responsible for this view of her life and work, because of her self-presententation as wholly...
names
Mary Renault
BirthName: Eileen Mary Challans
Nickname: Molly
MR
was known as Molly in her childhood, because her mother Clementine was often called Mary in the family. It took a long time for her to achieve being...
Occupation
Una Troubridge
By the age of sixteen, UT
had begun receiving commissions for her sculptures and had rented a studio of her own in which to exhibit her works. The money she earned from these commissions gave...
Occupation
Una Troubridge
By 1925 UT
was working as a reader of manuscripts for Cassells
and for Radclyffe Hall
's agent Audrey Heath
. She had also begun reviewing books for the Sunday Times.
Ormrod, Richard. Una Troubridge: The Friend of Radclyffe Hall. Carroll and Graf, 1985.
162
Cline, Sally. Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. John Murray, 1997.
201, 234
Other Life Event
Una Troubridge
The obscenity trial of Radclyffe Hall
's novel The Well of Loneliness began on 9 November 1928, when Hall's publisher received a summons. It and culminated on 16 November, when the novel was declared obscene...
Cline, Sally. Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. John Murray, 1997.
165
Baker, Michael. Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall. Hamish Hamilton, 1985.
124, 128, 131
politics
Vita Sackville-West
VSW
disliked the term feminist, though many of her socially nonconforming attitudes would attract that term today. She supported the fight for Radclyffe Hall
's Well of Loneliness. She did not involve herself...
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...
politics
Virginia Woolf
The New Censorship, a letter to the editor protesting against the suppression of Radclyffe Hall'sThe Well of Loneliness and signed by VW
and E. M. Forster
, appeared in the Nation.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan, 1989.
115
politics
Mary Renault
MR
appreciated Compton Mackenzie
's Extraordinary Women, which dealt openly with lesbians and evaded the censor because it treated lesbianism as comic. She referred to it in a review as a masterpiece of gentle...
