Radclyffe Hall

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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.
Black and white photograph of Radclyffe Hall, shown from the waist up. She is wearing a man's suit and tie, and her short hair is slicked back. In her left hand she holds a small black dog.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Violet Hunt
Distraught over her split with Ford , VH was supported by several of her women writer friends, especially Radclyffe Hall , Dorothy Richardson , Ethel Colburn Mayne , May Sinclair , and Rebecca West .
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
251
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...
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...
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
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Stella Gibbons
SG 's biographer, Reggie Oliver , speculates that the lesbian writer figure, Dorothy Hoad, may be based on Dorothy Wellesley .
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
politics E. M. Forster
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...
Literary responses Isabella Ormston Ford
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, pp. 25-42.
31
She...
Textual Production Zoë Fairbairns
ZF wrote the introduction to a new edition of Radclyffe Hall 's The Unlit Lamp, her first-written but second-published novel, dating from 1924.
Fairbairns, Zoë, and Radclyffe Hall. “Introduction”. The Unlit Lamp, Lester and Orpen Dennys.
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...
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...
Education Edith Craig
EC was educated first at a co-educational school run by Mrs Cole in Foxton Road, Earl's Court, London. This school, at which Edith became a boarder in 1883, had also been attended by...
Leisure and Society Edith Craig
Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge , who lived nearby, were among those who attended the Barn Theatre performances.
Cockin, Katharine. Edith Craig (1869-1947): Dramatic Lives. Cassell.
161
Virginia Woolf 's letters to Vita Sackville-West reflect her interest in attending, though it is not...
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
Friends, Associates Vera Brittain
VB was one of forty witnesses marshalled by the defence counsel when Radclyffe Hall 's The Well of Loneliness was prosecuted for obscenity.
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus.
228

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Texts

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