{"product_id":"hall-radclyffe-pseud-for-marguerite-antonia-radclyffe-hall-the-well-of-loneliness","title":"HALL, Radclyffe [pseud. for Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall.] The Well of Loneliness.","description":"\u003ch3 style=\"font-variant: small-caps\"\u003e‘Give Us Also the Right to Our Existence’\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHALL, Radclyffe [pseud. for Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall.]\u003c\/strong\u003e The Well of Loneliness. \u003ci\u003eLondon: Jonathan Cape\u003c\/i\u003e. 1928.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8vo. Publisher’s black cloth lettered in gilt to spine, typographic dust-jacket, priced 15s to front flap, top-edge black; pp. 511, [1]; jacket rubbed, with numerous nicks, chips and tears to edges, diagonal tear (\u003ci\u003ec\u003c\/i\u003e. 90mm) to front panel, a handful of shallow horizontal tears to the spine, vertical crease the length of the spine obscuring a couple of the printed letters, minor loss to head and foot of spine; cloth a little rubbed with light surface marking, spine tips softened, lower edge with six short closed tears, with some loss to cloth; about very good, in a good, still quite bright, jacket; purple bookseller’s stamp for Nina Bellhouse of Queen Elm Parade to rear pastedown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRadclyffe Hall’s seminal lesbian novel, suppressed as obscene in 1928. This copy, from the second and final printing before the ban, retains the scarce original dust jacket.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn his prefatory appreciation, Havelock Ellis describes The Well of Loneliness as ‘the first English novel which presents, in a completely faithful and uncompromising form, one particular aspect of sexual life as it exists amongst us to-day’ (p. 7). Hall, already the author of four novels and at the height of her literary success, sought to break the public silence surrounding homosexuality, advocating greater tolerance and awareness of the difficulties imposed by a hostile society. Her protagonist, Stephen Gordon, dresses as a man, adopts a male name, and identifies as a ‘sexual invert’ – reflecting aspects of Hall’s own life: she too dressed in suits, privately used the name ‘John’, and maintained long-term relationships with women. Presenting lesbianism as a natural and involuntary condition, the novel ends with a resonant plea for recognition: ‘Acknowledge us, oh God, before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnticipating trouble, Jonathan Cape deliberately withheld review copies from publications likely to cause difficulties for the book and its author. Nevertheless, on 19 August 1928 (a month after the novel’s publication), James Douglas, editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Sunday Express\u003c\/i\u003e, published an article entitled ‘A Book That Must Be Suppressed’, declaring that he ‘would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul’. What followed led to legal proceedings in November, and (despite the support of literary figures including Virginia and Leonard Woolf) to Sir Chartres Biron, Chief Magistrate at Bow Street, declaring the novel an ‘obscene libel’ and ordering seized copies to be destroyed. This second printing – with ‘whip’ corrected to ‘whips’ on p. 50 – was the last before the novel’s suppression. Unavailable again until 1949, it has since been recognised as a landmark of twentieth-century queer fiction.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSKU: \u003c\/strong\u003e2126001\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Henry Sotheran Limited","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":64400043180409,"sku":"2126001","price":875.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0045\/2178\/7426\/files\/2126001.jpg?v=1787935912","url":"https:\/\/sotherans.co.uk\/products\/hall-radclyffe-pseud-for-marguerite-antonia-radclyffe-hall-the-well-of-loneliness","provider":"Sotherans","version":"1.0","type":"link"}