Radclyffe Hall
Encyclopedia
Radclyffe Hall was an English
poet
and author
, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness
.
, Hampshire
(now Dorset
) in 1880, to a wealthy philandering father and quarrelsome mother. Lonely while growing up (her parents separated when she was a baby and she was virtually ignored by her mother and stepfather), she was educated at King's College London
, and then in Germany.
Hall was a lesbian and described herself as a "congenital invert
", a term taken from the writings of Havelock Ellis
and other turn-of-the-century sexologists. Having reached adulthood without a vocation, she spent much of her twenties pursuing women she eventually lost to marriage.
In 1907 at the Homburg
spa in Germany, Hall met Mabel Batten, a well-known amateur singer of lieder. Batten (nicknamed "Ladye") was 51 to Hall's 27, and was married with an adult daughter and grandchildren. They fell in love, and after Batten's husband died they set up residence together. Batten gave Hall the nickname John, which she used the rest of her life.
In 1915 Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's cousin Una Troubridge
(1887–1963), a sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge
, and the mother of a young daughter. Mabel Batten died the following year, and in 1917 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. The relationship would last until Hall's death. In 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigré Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her, which Troubridge painfully tolerated. Hall became involved in affairs with other women throughout the years, possibly including blues
singer Ethel Waters
.
Hall lived with Troubridge in London and, during the 1930s, in the tiny town of Rye, East Sussex
, noted for its many writers, including her contemporary the novelist E.F. Benson. She died at age 63 of colon cancer, and is interred at Highgate Cemetery
in North London
. The vault containing her remains is in the Circle of Lebanon, half way round from the Egyptian Avenue entrance.
In 1930 Radclyffe Hall received the Gold Medal of the Eichelbergher Humane Award. She was a member of the PEN club, the Council of the Society for Psychical Research
and a fellow of the Zoological Society.
Radclyffe Hall was listed at number sixteen in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper.
) and studying to become a doctor, but feels trapped by her manipulative mother's emotional dependence on her. Its length and grimness made it a difficult book to sell, so she deliberately chose a lighter theme for her next novel, a social comedy entitled The Forge. While she had used her full name for her early poetry collections, she shortened it to M. Radclyffe Hall for The Forge. The book was a modest success, making the bestseller list of John O'London's Weekly
. The Unlit Lamp, which followed it into print, was the first of her books to give the author's name simply as Radclyffe Hall.
There followed another comic novel, A Saturday Life (1925), and then Adam's Breed (1926), a novel about an Italian headwaiter who, becoming disgusted with his job and even with food itself, gives away his belongings and lives as a hermit in the forest. The book's mystical themes have been compared to Hermann Hesse
's Siddhartha
. It sold very well, was critically acclaimed, and won both the Prix Femina
and the James Tait Black Prize, a feat previously achieved only by E. M. Forster
's A Passage to India
.
, the only one of her eight novels to have overt lesbian
themes. Published in 1928, The Well of Loneliness deals with the life of Stephen Gordon, a masculine lesbian who, like Hall herself, identifies as an invert. Although Gordon's attitude toward her own sexuality is anguished, the novel presents lesbianism as natural and makes a plea for greater tolerance.
Although The Well of Loneliness is not sexually explicit, it was nevertheless the subject of an obscenity
trial
in the UK, which resulted in all copies of the novel being ordered destroyed. The United States allowed its publication only after a long court battle. It is currently published in the UK by Virago
, and by Anchor Press in the United States.
The Well of Loneliness was number seven on a list of the top 100 lesbian and gay novels compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.
entitled The Sink of Solitude appeared during the controversy over The Well. Although its primary targets were James Douglas, who had called for The Wells suppression, and the Home Secretary
William Joynson-Hicks, who had started legal proceedings, it also mocked Hall and her book. One of the illustrations, which depicted Hall nailed to a cross, so horrified her that she could barely speak of it for years afterward. Her sense of guilt at being depicted in a drawing that she saw as blasphemous led to her choice of a religious subject for her next novel, The Master of the House.
At Hall's insistence, The Master of the House was published with no cover blurb
, which may have misled some purchasers into thinking it was another novel about inversion. Advance sales were strong, and the book made #1 on the Observers bestseller list, but it received poor reviews in several key periodicals, and sales soon dropped off. In the United States reviewers treated the book more kindly, but shortly after the book's publication, all copies were seized—not by the police, but by creditors. Hall's American publisher had gone bankrupt. Houghton Mifflin took over the rights, but by the time the book could be republished, its sales momentum was lost.
girls' school story
entitled The Girls of Radcliff Hall
, in which he depicts himself and his circle of friends, including Cecil Beaton
and Oliver Messel
, as lesbian schoolgirls at a school named "Radcliff Hall". The indiscretions the novel (which was written under the pseudonym
"Adela Quebec" and published and distributed privately) alluded to created an uproar among Berners's intimates and acquaintances, making the whole affair highly discussed in the 1930s. Cecil Beaton attempted to have all the copies destroyed. The novel subsequently disappeared from circulation, making it extremely rare. The story is, however, included in the Berners anthology Collected Tales and Fantasies.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness
The Well of Loneliness
The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" is apparent from an early age...
.
Life
Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born in BournemouthBournemouth
Bournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
, Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
(now Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
) in 1880, to a wealthy philandering father and quarrelsome mother. Lonely while growing up (her parents separated when she was a baby and she was virtually ignored by her mother and stepfather), she was educated at King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
, and then in Germany.
Hall was a lesbian and described herself as a "congenital invert
Sexual inversion (sexology)
Sexual inversion is a term used by sexologists, primarily in the late 19th and early 20th century, to refer to homosexuality. Sexual inversion was believed to be an inborn reversal of gender traits: male inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally female pursuits and...
", a term taken from the writings of Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...
and other turn-of-the-century sexologists. Having reached adulthood without a vocation, she spent much of her twenties pursuing women she eventually lost to marriage.
Bad Homburg
Bad Homburg vor der Höhe is the district town of the Hochtaunuskreis, Hesse, Germany, on the southern slope of the Taunus, bordering among others Frankfurt am Main and Oberursel...
spa in Germany, Hall met Mabel Batten, a well-known amateur singer of lieder. Batten (nicknamed "Ladye") was 51 to Hall's 27, and was married with an adult daughter and grandchildren. They fell in love, and after Batten's husband died they set up residence together. Batten gave Hall the nickname John, which she used the rest of her life.
In 1915 Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's cousin Una Troubridge
Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge
Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge was a British sculptor and translator. She is best known as the long-time partner of Marguerite "John" Radclyffe-Hall, the author of The Well of Loneliness.Troubridge was an educated woman who had many achievements in her own right...
(1887–1963), a sculptor who was the wife of Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge
Ernest Troubridge
Admiral Sir Ernest Charles Thomas Troubridge KCMG, MVO was an officer of the Royal Navy who served during the First World War, later rising to the rank of admiral....
, and the mother of a young daughter. Mabel Batten died the following year, and in 1917 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. The relationship would last until Hall's death. In 1934 Hall fell in love with Russian émigré Evguenia Souline and embarked upon a long-term affair with her, which Troubridge painfully tolerated. Hall became involved in affairs with other women throughout the years, possibly including blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
singer Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters was an American blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and actress. She frequently performed jazz, big band, and pop music, on the Broadway stage and in concerts, although she began her career in the 1920s singing blues.Her best-known recordings includes, "Dinah", "Birmingham Bertha",...
.
Hall lived with Troubridge in London and, during the 1930s, in the tiny town of Rye, East Sussex
Rye, East Sussex
Rye is a small town in East Sussex, England, which stands approximately two miles from the open sea and is at the confluence of three rivers: the Rother, the Tillingham and the Brede...
, noted for its many writers, including her contemporary the novelist E.F. Benson. She died at age 63 of colon cancer, and is interred at Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
in North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
. The vault containing her remains is in the Circle of Lebanon, half way round from the Egyptian Avenue entrance.
In 1930 Radclyffe Hall received the Gold Medal of the Eichelbergher Humane Award. She was a member of the PEN club, the Council of the Society for Psychical Research
Society for Psychical Research
The Society for Psychical Research is a non-profit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena...
and a fellow of the Zoological Society.
Radclyffe Hall was listed at number sixteen in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes in The Pink Paper.
Novels
Hall's first novel was The Unlit Lamp, the story of Joan Ogden, a young girl who dreams of setting up a flat in London with her friend Elizabeth (a so-called Boston marriageBoston marriage
Boston marriage as a term is said to have been in use in New England in the decades spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe two women living together, independent of financial support from a man. The term was little known until the debut in 2000 of the David Mamet play of the...
) and studying to become a doctor, but feels trapped by her manipulative mother's emotional dependence on her. Its length and grimness made it a difficult book to sell, so she deliberately chose a lighter theme for her next novel, a social comedy entitled The Forge. While she had used her full name for her early poetry collections, she shortened it to M. Radclyffe Hall for The Forge. The book was a modest success, making the bestseller list of John O'London's Weekly
John O'London's Weekly
John O'London's Weekly was a weekly literary magazine that was published by George Newnes of London between 1919 and 1954. Regarded as the leading literary magazine in the British Empire, at its height it had a circulation of 80,000, and it was popular among young and older readers alike.Founded in...
. The Unlit Lamp, which followed it into print, was the first of her books to give the author's name simply as Radclyffe Hall.
There followed another comic novel, A Saturday Life (1925), and then Adam's Breed (1926), a novel about an Italian headwaiter who, becoming disgusted with his job and even with food itself, gives away his belongings and lives as a hermit in the forest. The book's mystical themes have been compared to Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's Siddhartha
Siddhartha (novel)
Siddhartha is a novel by Hermann Hesse that deals with the spiritual journey of an Indian man named Siddhartha during the time of the Buddha.The book, Hesse's ninth novel , was written in German, in a simple, powerful, and lyrical style. It was published in the U.S. in 1951 and became influential...
. It sold very well, was critically acclaimed, and won both the Prix Femina
Prix Femina
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse . The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women...
and the James Tait Black Prize, a feat previously achieved only by E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
's A Passage to India
A Passage to India
A Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time...
.
The Well of Loneliness
Hall is best known for The Well of LonelinessThe Well of Loneliness
The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" is apparent from an early age...
, the only one of her eight novels to have overt lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
themes. Published in 1928, The Well of Loneliness deals with the life of Stephen Gordon, a masculine lesbian who, like Hall herself, identifies as an invert. Although Gordon's attitude toward her own sexuality is anguished, the novel presents lesbianism as natural and makes a plea for greater tolerance.
Although The Well of Loneliness is not sexually explicit, it was nevertheless the subject of an obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
trial
Trial (law)
In law, a trial is when parties to a dispute come together to present information in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court...
in the UK, which resulted in all copies of the novel being ordered destroyed. The United States allowed its publication only after a long court battle. It is currently published in the UK by Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....
, and by Anchor Press in the United States.
The Well of Loneliness was number seven on a list of the top 100 lesbian and gay novels compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.
Later novels
An anonymous verse lampoonParody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
entitled The Sink of Solitude appeared during the controversy over The Well. Although its primary targets were James Douglas, who had called for The Wells suppression, and the Home Secretary
Home Secretary
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...
William Joynson-Hicks, who had started legal proceedings, it also mocked Hall and her book. One of the illustrations, which depicted Hall nailed to a cross, so horrified her that she could barely speak of it for years afterward. Her sense of guilt at being depicted in a drawing that she saw as blasphemous led to her choice of a religious subject for her next novel, The Master of the House.
At Hall's insistence, The Master of the House was published with no cover blurb
Blurb
A blurb is a short summary or some words of praise accompanying a creative work, usually used on books without giving away any details, that is usually referring to the words on the back of the book jacket but also commonly seen on DVD and video cases, web portals, and news websites.- History :The...
, which may have misled some purchasers into thinking it was another novel about inversion. Advance sales were strong, and the book made #1 on the Observers bestseller list, but it received poor reviews in several key periodicals, and sales soon dropped off. In the United States reviewers treated the book more kindly, but shortly after the book's publication, all copies were seized—not by the police, but by creditors. Hall's American publisher had gone bankrupt. Houghton Mifflin took over the rights, but by the time the book could be republished, its sales momentum was lost.
The Girls of Radcliff Hall
The British composer and bon-vivant Gerald Berners, the 14th Lord Berners, wrote a roman à clefRoman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
girls' school story
School story
The school story is a fiction genre centering on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, at its most popular in the first half of the twentieth century. While examples do exist in other countries, it is most commonly set in English boarding schools and mostly written in girls and boys sub...
entitled The Girls of Radcliff Hall
The Girls of Radcliff Hall
The Girls of Radcliff Hall is a roman à clef novel in the form of a lesbian girls' school story written in the 1930s by the British composer and bon-vivant Gerald Berners, the 14th Lord Berners, under the pseudonym "Adela Quebec", published and distributed privately in 1932...
, in which he depicts himself and his circle of friends, including Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, CBE was an English fashion and portrait photographer, diarist, painter, interior designer and an Academy Award-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre...
and Oliver Messel
Oliver Messel
Oliver Hilary Sambourne Messel was an English artist and one of the foremost stage designers of the 20th century....
, as lesbian schoolgirls at a school named "Radcliff Hall". The indiscretions the novel (which was written under the pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
"Adela Quebec" and published and distributed privately) alluded to created an uproar among Berners's intimates and acquaintances, making the whole affair highly discussed in the 1930s. Cecil Beaton attempted to have all the copies destroyed. The novel subsequently disappeared from circulation, making it extremely rare. The story is, however, included in the Berners anthology Collected Tales and Fantasies.
Novels
- The Forge (1924)
- The Unlit Lamp (1924)
- A Saturday Life (1925)
- Adam's Breed (1926)
- The Well of LonelinessThe Well of LonelinessThe Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" is apparent from an early age...
(1928) - The Master of the House (1932)
- Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (1926)
- The Sixth Beatitude (William Heineman Ltd, London, 1936)
Poetry
- The Forgotten Island (London: Chapman & Hall, 1915)
- Dedicated to Sir Arthur Sullivan (England: s.n., 1894)
- A Sheaf Of Verses : Poems (London: J. and E. Bumpus, 1908)
- Twixt Earth And Stars (London: John and Edward Bumpus Ltd., 1906)
- Poems of the Past & Present (London: Chapman And Hall, 1910)
- Songs of Three Counties and Other Poems (London: Chapman & Hall, 1913)
- Rhymes and Rhythms (Milan, 1948)
Further reading
- Una TroubridgeUna Vincenzo, Lady TroubridgeUna Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge was a British sculptor and translator. She is best known as the long-time partner of Marguerite "John" Radclyffe-Hall, the author of The Well of Loneliness.Troubridge was an educated woman who had many achievements in her own right...
(1961): The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall (London: Hammond) - Lovat DicksonLovat DicksonLovat Dickson, born Horatio Henry Lovat Dickson was a notable publisher and writer, the first Canadian to have a major publishing role in Britain. He is best known today for his biographies of Grey Owl, Richard Hillary, Radclyffe Hall and H. G. Wells...
(1975): Radclyffe Hall and the Well of Loneliness: A Sapphic Chronicle (HarperCollins) - Michael J. N. Baker (1985): Our Three Selves. The Life of Radclyffe Hall (New York: William Morrow)
- Sally Cline (1999): Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John (Overlook Press)
- Diana Souhami (1998: The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
External links
- Guardian story: Lesbian novel was 'danger to nation'
- Radclyffe Hall The Knitting Circle: Literature
- Hall, Radclyffe From the Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, & Queer Culture
- Radclyffe Hall Collection, Photographs at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...