ABSTRACT
British Writer Baker, Michael, Our Three Selves: A Life of Radclyffe Hall, London: Hamish Hamilton, and New
Amersham: Avebury,1982 O’Rourke, Rebecca, Reflecting on The Well of Loneliness, London and New York: Routledge, 1989 Troubridge, Una, The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall, London: Hammond and Hammond, 1961 Radclyffe Hall has been most well known for the trials for obscenity based on her fourth novel, The Well of Loneliness, in England in 1928, and in the United States in 1929. Although the novel achieved notoriety as a banned book, this was not the desired effect of its author. Hall had an established profile as the author of three novels when she deliberately and courageously sought to write about “sexual inversion,” knowing that it might end her writing career. The strength of Hall’s commitment to representing the lesbian in a detailed and sympathetic manner in the novel derived from her own experience as a lesbian, as a Roman Catholic, and as a white, English upper-class woman. In the event, devastating as the trial was, particularly to Hall and her lover, Una, Lady Troubridge, it did not see the end of Hall’s career as a writer. The effects of the London trial have been far-reaching, marking a legislative landmark in lesbian history. The effects of the representation of lesbian characters in Hall’s novel have also been significant. A lesbian identity was brought into public (heterosexual) debate, but its declared biological and pathological basis has provided a controversial and deeply ambiguous legacy for subsequent lesbian readers.
