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...
Author summary
Una Troubridge
Twentieth-century translator and biographer UT
is best remembered for her numerous translations from the French and Italian, and for her biography of her lover of twenty-eight years, the writer Radclyffe Hall
. UT
also published...
Publishing
Una Troubridge
Gallimard
published Léo Lack
's and UT
's French translation of Radclyffe Hall
's novel The Well of Loneliness, as Le puits de solitude.
Ormrod, Richard. Una Troubridge: The Friend of Radclyffe Hall. Carroll and Graf.
205
Cline, Sally. Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. John Murray.
During her involvement with the Society for Psychical Research
, from about 1916 to 1921, a number of UT
's papers appeared in the Proceedings, some of which she co-wrote with Radclyffe Hall
.
Troubridge, Una. The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall. Hammond, Hammond.
57
Publishing
Naomi Mitchison
She had finished this book, and her publisher had read it by 1933. She argued for months over its acceptability with her usual publishers, Jonathan Cape
(who had been fined for publishing Radclyffe Hall
's...
Textual Features
Mary Renault
Lesbianism had been the subject of novels in the 1920s and 30s. Virginia Woolf
's Mrs. Dalloway and Elizabeth Bowen
's The Hotel had both been criticised (the latter severely) for sympathetic treatments of emotional...
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 Features
Violet Hunt
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...
Textual Features
Naomi Mitchison
Her format here has stories or groups of stories introduced and ended with a poem. Topics range from ancient to contemporary, from sexuality to politics. The first poem has Phaedra
telling her sister Ariadne
about...
Textual Production
Una Troubridge
UT
published her biography, The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall, which she had finished writing by 19 February 1945.
Norman, Sylva. “A Woman’s World”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 3119, p. 883.
883
Troubridge, Una. The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall. Hammond, Hammond.
5
Ormrod, Richard. Una Troubridge: The Friend of Radclyffe Hall. Carroll and Graf.
291, 307-8
Cline, Sally. Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. John Murray.
107
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 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...
Textual Production
Stevie Smith
SS
's list of requisites for a critic or reviewer goes like this: Attention, impartiality, and no regard for age or sex.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage.
173
In April 1941 she was reviewing for John O'London's, Country Life...
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
Textual Production
Violet Trefusis
Around 1941, VT
and Vita discussed another writing of their story. Vita thought that a novel superior to Radclyffe Hall
's loathsomeWell of Loneliness could be produced, but soon dismissed the idea of a...
