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The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the English author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" (that is, homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as having a debilitating effect on inverts. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence".[1] Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
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In political geography and international politics a country is a geographical entity, a territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation. ...
The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ...
A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ...
Jonathan Cape has been since 1987 an imprint of Random House. ...
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Year 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar). ...
Lesbian literature includes works by lesbian authors, as well as lesbian-themed works by heterosexual authors. ...
Image:Radclyffe-hall-190x274. ...
This article is about the English as an ethnic group and nation. ...
Sexual inversion is a term used by sexologists, primarily in the late 19th and early 20th century, to refer to homosexuality. ...
“The Great War †redirects here. ...
The Well became the target of a campaign by the editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, who wrote "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." Although its only sex scene consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided", a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women".[2] In the United States the book survived legal challenges in New York state and in Customs Court.[3] The Daily Express is a British newspaper, currently tabloid, and it is owned by Richard Desmond. ...
Hydrogen cyanide is a chemical compound with chemical formula H-C≡N. A solution of hydrogen cyanide in water is called hydrocyanic acid or prussic acid. ...
State nickname: Empire State Other U.S. States Capital Albany Largest city New York Governor George Pataki Official languages None Area 141,205 km² (27th) - Land 122,409 km² - Water 18,795 km² (13. ...
The United States Court of International Trade is an Article III court, with full powers in law and equity. ...
Publicity over The Well's legal battles increased the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture.[4] For decades it was the best-known lesbian novel in English, and often the first source of information about lesbianism that young lesbians could find.[5] Some lesbian readers have valued it, while others have criticized it for Stephen's expressions of self-hatred and seen it as inspiring shame.[6] Its role in promoting images of lesbians as "mannish" or cross-dressed women has also been controversial. Some critics now argue that Stephen should be seen as transsexual.[7] This articles is about cross-dressing in general, that is the act of wearing the clothing of another gender for any reason. ...
A transsexual (sometimes transexual) person establishes a permanent identity with the opposite gender to their assigned (usually at birth) sex. ...
Although few critics rate The Well highly as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate.[7]
Background In 1926, Radclyffe Hall was at the height of her career. Her novel Adam's Breed, about the spiritual awakening of an Italian headwaiter, had become a bestseller; it would soon win the Prix Femina and the James Tait Black Prize.[8] She had long thought of writing a novel about sexual inversion; now, she believed, her literary reputation would allow such a work to be given a hearing. Since she knew she was risking scandal and "the shipwreck of her whole career", she sought and received the blessing of her partner, Una Troubridge, before she began work.[9] Her goals were social and political; she wanted to end public silence about homosexuality and bring about "a more tolerant understanding" — as well as to "spur all classes of inverts to make good through hard work... and sober and useful living".[10] The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse (today known as Femina). ...
Founded in 1919, the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are among the oldest and most prestigious book awards in Britain. ...
In April 1928 she told her editor that her new book would require complete commitment from its publisher and that she would not allow even one word to be altered. "I have put my pen at the service of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world.... So far as I know nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before in fiction."[11]
Plot summary The book's protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is born in the late Victorian era[12] to upper-class parents in Worcestershire who are expecting a boy and who christen her with the boy's name they had already chosen. Even at birth she is physically unusual, a "narrow-hipped, wide-shouldered little tadpole of a baby".[13] As a girl she hates dresses, wants to cut her hair short, and longs to be a boy. At seven, she develops a crush on a housemaid named Collins, and is devastated when she sees Collins kissing a footman. Queen Victoria (shown here on the morning of her Ascension to the Throne, 20 June 1837) gave her name to the historic era The Victorian era of the United Kingdom marked the height of the British industrial revolution and the apex of the British Empire. ...
Worcestershire (pronounced ; abbreviated Worcs) is a county located in the West Midlands region of central England. ...
Stephen's father, Sir Phillip, dotes on her; he seeks to understand her through the writings of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first modern writer to propose a theory of homosexuality,[14] but does not share his findings with Stephen. Her mother, Lady Anna, is distant, seeing Stephen as a "blemished, unworthy, maimed reproduction" of Sir Phillip.[15] At eighteen, Stephen forms a close friendship with a Canadian man, Martin Hallam, but is horrified when he declares his love for her. The following winter, Sir Phillip is crushed by a falling tree; at the last moment he tries to explain to Lady Anna that Stephen is an invert, but dies without managing to do so.-1...
Sexual inversion is a term used by sexologists, primarily in the late 19th and early 20th century, to refer to homosexuality. ...
Stephen begins to dress in masculine, tailor-made clothes. At twenty-one she falls in love with Angela Crossby, the American wife of a new neighbor. Angela uses Stephen as an "anodyne against boredom", allowing her "a few rather schoolgirlish kisses".[17] Then Stephen discovers that Angela is having an affair with a man. Fearing exposure, Angela shows a letter from Stephen to her husband, who sends it to Stephen's mother. Lady Anna denounces Stephen for "presum[ing] to use the word love in connection with... these unnatural cravings of your unbalanced mind and undisciplined body". Stephen replies, "As my father loved you, I loved.... It was good, good, good — I'd have laid down my life a thousand times over for Angela Crossby."[18] After the argument, Stephen goes to her father's study and for the first time opens his locked bookcase. She finds a book by Krafft-Ebing — assumed by critics to be Psychopathia Sexualis, a text about homosexuality and paraphilias[19] — and, reading it, learns that she is an invert. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (945x1500, 259 KB) Portrait of the writer and salonist Natalie Clifford Barney. ...
Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (945x1500, 259 KB) Portrait of the writer and salonist Natalie Clifford Barney. ...
Nathalie Barney (1876-1972), also known as Natalie Barney, was a American heiress who became well known as the mistress of a literary salon in France. ...
A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horaces definition of the aims of poetry, to...
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (August 4, 1840–December 22, 1902), German psychiatrist, wrote Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a famous study of sexual perversity, and remains well-known for his coinage of the term sadism. ...
Psychopathia Sexualis may refer to: Psychopathia Sexualis (book), a psychology book on sexuality by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing Psychopathia Sexualis (album), an album by Whitehouse An album by The Makers (American band) Psychopathia Sexualis (play), a play by John Patrick Shanley A controversial comic by Miguel Ãngel MartÃn...
Paraphilia (in Greek para παρά = over and philia φιλία = friendship) is a mental health term recently used to indicate sexual arousal in response to sexual objects or situations that are not part of societally normative arousal/activity patterns, or which may interfere with...
Stephen moves to London and writes a well-received first novel. Her second novel is less successful, and her friend the playwright Jonathan Brockett, himself an invert, urges her to travel to Paris to improve her writing through a fuller experience of life. There she makes her first, brief contact with urban invert culture, meeting the lesbian salon hostess Valérie Seymour. During World War I she joins an ambulance unit, eventually serving at the front and earning the Croix de Guerre. She falls in love with a younger fellow driver, Mary Llewellyn, who comes to live with her after the war ends. They are happy at first, but Mary becomes lonely when Stephen returns to writing. Rejected by polite society, Mary throws herself into Parisian gay nightlife. Stephen believes Mary is becoming hardened and embittered and feels powerless to provide her with "a more complete and normal existence".[20] City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) Paris Eiffel tower as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ...
A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horaces definition of the aims of poetry, to...
“The Great War †redirects here. ...
The Croix de guerre is a military decoration of both Belgium and France which was first created in 1915. ...
Martin Hallam, now living in Paris, rekindles his old friendship with Stephen. In time, he falls in love with Mary. Persuaded that she cannot give Mary happiness, Stephen pretends to have an affair with Valérie Seymour in order to drive her into Martin's arms. The novel ends with Stephen's plea to God: "Give us also the right to our existence!"[21]
Autobiographical and other sources Although some writers in the 1970s and 80s treated The Well of Loneliness as a thinly veiled autobiography,[22] Hall's childhood bore little resemblance to Stephen's.[23] Angela Crossby may be a composite of various women with whom Hall had affairs in her youth, but Mary, whose lack of outside interests leaves her idle when Stephen is working,[24] does not resemble Hall's partner Una Troubridge, an accomplished sculptor who translated Colette's novels into English.[25] Hall said she drew on herself only for the "fundamental emotions that are characteristic of the inverted".[26] Colette Colette [1] [2] was the pen name of the French novelist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (January 28, 1873 – August 3, 1954). ...
 Women of the Hackett Lowther Unit work on ambulances. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
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World War I Although Hall's Author's Note disclaims any real-world basis for the ambulance unit that Stephen joins, she drew heavily on the wartime experiences of her friend Toupie Lowther, co-commander of the only women's unit to serve on the front in France. Lowther, like Stephen, came from an aristocratic family, adopted a masculine style of dress, and was an accomplished fencer.[27] In later years she said the character of Stephen was based on her, which may have been partly true.[28]
In The Well of Loneliness, war work provides a publicly acceptable role for inverted women. The narrative voice asks that their contributions not be forgotten and predicts that they will not go back into hiding: "a battalion was formed in those terrible years that would never again be completely disbanded".[29] This military metaphor continues later in the novel when inverts in postwar Paris are repeatedly referred to as a "miserable army".[30] Hall invokes the image of the shell-shocked soldier to depict inverts as psychologically damaged by their outcast status: "for bombs do not trouble the nerves of the invert, but rather that terrible silent bombardment from the batteries of God's good people".[31] The military term combat stress reaction (CSR) comprises the range of adverse behaviours in reaction to the stress of combat and combat related activities. ...
Remains of a battery of English cannon from Youghal, County Cork. ...
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The Petit Trianon, Versailles The Petit Trianon, situated at a short distance from the Grand Trianon in Versailles, France, was designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel by order of Louis XV for his long-term mistress, Madame de Pompadour, and was constructed between 1762-1768. ...
Versailles (pronounced in French), formerly de facto capital of the kingdom of France, is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and is still an important administrative and judicial center. ...
Paris lesbian and gay subculture In Hall's time, Paris was known for having a relatively large and visible gay and lesbian community — in part because France, unlike England, had no laws against male homosexuality.[32] When Stephen first travels there, at the urging of her friend Jonathan Brockett — who may be based on Noel Coward[33] — she has not yet spoken about her inversion to anyone. Brockett, acting as tour guide, hints at a secret history of inversion in the city by referring to Marie Antoinette's rumored relationship with the Princesse de Lamballe.[34] Noel Coward Sir Noel Peirce Coward (December 16, 1899 – March 26, 1973) was an English actor, playwright, and composer of popular music. ...
Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France and Archduchess of Austria (born November 1755 – executed 16 October 1793) Daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, wife of Louis XVI and mother of Louis XVII. She was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution. ...
Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan, princesse de Lamballe (September 8, 1749 - September 3, 1792), was one of the best-known victims of the French Revolution. ...
 The Temple of Friendship at Natalie Barney's home at 20, Rue Jacob Brockett next introduces Stephen to Valérie Seymour, who — like her prototype, Natalie Clifford Barney[33] — is the hostess of a literary salon, many of whose guests are lesbians and gay men. Immediately after this meeting, Stephen announces she has decided to settle in Paris; the house she buys, with its temple in a corner of an overgrown garden, is on the Rue Jacob, the street where Barney lived and held her salon.[35] Stephen is wary of Valérie, however, and does not visit her salon until after the war, when Brockett persuades her that Mary is becoming too isolated. She finds Valérie to be an "indestructible creature" capable of bestowing a sense of self-respect on others, at least temporarily: "everyone felt very normal and brave when they gathered together at Valérie Seymour's".[36] With Stephen's misgivings "drugged", she and Mary are drawn further into the "desolate country" of Paris gay life, until at Alec's Bar — the worst in a series of depressing nightspots — they encounter "the battered remnants of men who... despised of the world, must despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation".[37] Image File history File linksMetadata No higher resolution available. ...
Image File history File linksMetadata No higher resolution available. ...
Natalie Clifford Barney (31 October 1876 – 2 February 1972) was an American expatriate who lived, wrote, and hosted a literary salon in Paris. ...
A salon is a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings, often consciously following Horaces definition of the aims of poetry, to...
Many of those familiar with the subculture she described, including her own friends, disagreed with her portrayal of it; Romaine Brooks called her "a digger-up of worms with the pretension of a distinguished archaeologist".[38] Hall's correspondence shows that the negative view of bars like Alec's that she expressed in The Well was sincerely meant,[39] but she also knew that such bars did not represent the only homosexual communities in Paris,[40] and it is a commonplace of criticism that her own experience of lesbian life was not as miserable as Stephen's.[41] By focusing on misery and describing its cause as "ceaseless persecution" by "the so-called just and righteous", she intensified the urgency of her plea for change.[42] Romaine Brooks (May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970), born Beatrice Romaine Goddard, was an American painter who specialized in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the color gray. ...
Religious, philosophical, and scientific content
Sexology Hall wrote The Well of Loneliness in part to popularize the ideas of sexologists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, who regarded homosexuality as an inborn and inalterable trait: congenital sexual inversion.[43] In Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), the first book Stephen finds in her father's study, inversion is described as a degenerative disorder common in families with histories of mental illness.[44] Exposure to these ideas leads Stephen to describe herself and other inverts as "hideously maimed and ugly".[45] However, later texts such as Sexual Inversion (1896) by Havelock Ellis — who contributed a foreword to The Well — described inversion simply as a difference, not as a defect. By 1901 Krafft-Ebing had adopted a similar view.[46] Hall championed their ideas over those of the psychoanalysts, who saw homosexuality as a form of arrested psychological development, and some of whom believed it could be changed.[47] Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (August 4, 1840–December 22, 1902), German psychiatrist, wrote Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a famous study of sexual perversity, and remains well-known for his coinage of the term sadism. ...
Henry Havelock Ellis (February 2, 1859 - July 8, 1939), known as Havelock Ellis, was a British doctor, sexual psychologist and social reformer. ...
Psychoanalysis is the revelation of unconscious relations, in a systematic way through an associative process. ...
The term sexual inversion implied gender role reversal. Female inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally male pursuits and dress;[48] according to Krafft-Ebing, they had a "masculine soul". Krafft-Ebing believed that the most extreme inverts also exhibited reversal of secondary sex characteristics; Ellis's research had not demonstrated any such physical differences, but he devoted a great deal of study to the search for them.[49] The idea appears in The Well in Stephen's unusual proportions at birth and in the scene set at Valerie Seymour's salon, where "the timbre of a voice, the build of an ankle, the texture of a hand" reveals the inversion of the guests.[50] A bagpiper in Scottish military clan-uniform. ...
Secondary sex characteristics are traits that distinguish the two sexes of a species, but that are not directly part of the reproductive system. ...
Some of the people that Ellis and Krafft-Ebing classed as inverts would probably now be considered transgender — particularly the pseudonymous Count Sandor in one of Krafft-Ebing's case studies, who passed as a man, and whose childhood experiences resemble Stephen's.[51] Michael Dillon, who in 1946 became the first female-to-male transsexual to undergo full sex reassignment surgery, used Stephen as an example in his book about his experiences,[52] and some critics now argue that Stephen Gordon is a transman rather than a lesbian.[53] Transgender (IPA: , from trans (Latin) and gender (English) ) is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies that diverge from the normative gender role (woman or man) commonly, but not always, assigned at birth, as well as the role traditionally held by society. ...
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ...
Michael Dillon is a 20th century philosopher and political theorist. ...
Transmen or trans men are transgender or transsexual people who were assigned female at birth based on genital appearance (or, in cases of intersexuality, were later assigned to the female gender) and who feel that this is not an accurate or complete description of themselves. ...
This article does not cite its references or sources. ...
Transmen or trans men are transgender or transsexual people who were assigned female at birth based on genital appearance (or, in cases of intersexuality, were later assigned to the female gender) and who feel that this is not an accurate or complete description of themselves. ...
The existence of feminine women in lesbian relationships posed a problem for inversion theory, since their attraction to women could not be explained as gender reversal. Ellis had described such women as passive objects of the desire of masculine inverts. Mary, however, actively pursues the reticent Stephen. Although Stephen believes Mary is leaving her for a heterosexual life with Martin Hallam at the end of The Well, Mary's intentions are never revealed. Her future remains unknown and her sexual identity unclear.[54]
Christianity and spiritualism Hall, who had converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1912, was devoutly religious.[55] She was also a believer in communication with the dead who had once hoped to become a medium[56] — a fact that brought her into conflict with the church, which condemned spiritualism.[57] Both these beliefs made their way into The Well of Loneliness. In spirituality, a medium or spirit medium (plural mediums) is an individual who possesses the ability to receive messages from spirits (discorporate entities), or claims that he or she can channel such entities — that is, write or speak in the voice of these entities rather than in the mediums...
By 1853, when the popular song Spirit Rappings was published, Spiritualism was the object of intense curiosity. ...
Stephen, born on Christmas Eve and named for the first martyr of Christianity, dreams as a child that "in some queer way she [is] Jesus".[58] When she discovers that Collins, object of her childhood crush, has housemaid's knee, she prays that the affliction be transferred to her: "I would like to wash Collins in my blood, Lord Jesus — I would like very much to be a Saviour to Collins — I love her, and I want to be hurt like You were".[59] This childish desire for martyrdom prefigures Stephen's ultimate self-sacrifice for Mary's sake.[60] After she tricks Mary into leaving her — carrying out a plan that leads Valérie to exclaim "you were made for a martyr!"[61] — Stephen, left alone in her home, sees the room thronged with inverts, living, dead, and unborn. They call on her to intercede with God for them, and finally possess her. It is with their collective voice that she demands of God, "Give us also the right to our existence".[62] St. ...
This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...
// Christianity In Christian practice, intercessory prayer is the act of one person praying for or on behalf of another person or situation. ...
Spiritual possession is a concept of many religions and tales, where it is believed that a demon may take temporary control of a human body, resulting in noticeable changes in behaviour. ...
After Stephen reads Krafft-Ebing in her father's library, she opens the Bible at random, seeking a sign, and reads Genesis 4:15, "And the Lord set a mark upon Cain...."[63] Hall uses the mark of Cain, a sign of shame and exile, throughout the novel as a metaphor for the situation of inverts.[64] Her defense of inversion took the form of a religious argument: God had created inverts, so humanity should accept them.[65] The Well's use of religious imagery outraged the book's opponents,[66] but Hall's vision of inversion as a God-given state was an influential contribution to the language of LGBT rights.[67] Genesis (Hebrew: , Greek: ΓÎνεσις, meaning birth, creation, cause, beginning, source or origin) is the first book of the Torah, the Tanakh, and the Old Testament. ...
In stories common to the Abrahamic religions, Cain or Káyin (קַיִן / קָיִן spear Standard Hebrew Qáyin, Tiberian Hebrew Qáyin / QÄyin; Arabic قايين QÄyÄ«n in the Arabic Bible; قابيل QÄbÄ«l in Islam) is the eldest son of Adam and Eve, and the first man born in creation...
In Christianity and Judaism, the curse of Cain and the mark of Cain refer to the Biblical passages in the Book of Genesis chapter 4, where God declared that Cain, the firstborn of Adam and Eve, was cursed, and placed a mark upon him to warn others that killing Cain...
LGBT social movements is a collective term for a number of movements that share related goals of social acceptance of homosexuality and/or gender variance. ...
Spoilers end here.
Publication and contemporary response Three publishers praised The Well but turned it down. Then Hall's agent sent the manuscript to Jonathan Cape, who, though cautious about publishing a controversial book, saw the potential for a commercial success. Cape tested the waters with a small print run of 1500 copies, priced at 15 shillings — about twice the cost of an average novel — to make it less attractive to sensation-seekers.[68] Publication, originally scheduled for autumn 1928, was moved up when he discovered that another novel with a lesbian theme, Compton Mackenzie's Extraordinary Women, was to be published in September. Though the two books would prove to have little in common, Hall and Cape saw Extraordinary Women as a competitor and wanted to beat it to market. The Well appeared on July 27, in a black cover with a discreet plain jacket. Cape sent review copies only to newspapers and magazines he thought would handle the subject matter non-sensationally.[69] Sir (Edward Montague) Compton Mackenzie, (1883–1972), was an Scottish novelist. ...
Early reviews were mixed. Some critics found the novel too preachy;[70] some, including Leonard Woolf, thought it was poorly structured; some complained of sloppiness in style. Others, however, praised both its sincerity and its artistry, and some expressed sympathy with Hall's moral argument.[71] In the three weeks after the book appeared in bookstores, no reviewer called for its suppression or suggested that it should not have been published.[72] A review in T.P.'s & Cassell's Weekly foresaw no difficulties for The Well: "One cannot say what effect this book will have on the public attitude of silence or derision, but every reader will agree with Mr. Havelock Ellis in the preface, that 'the poignant situations are set forth with a complete absence of offense.'"[73] Leonard Woolf (November 25, 1880 – August 14, 1969) married Virginia Woolf in 1912. ...
Sunday Express campaign James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, did not agree. Douglas was a dedicated moralist, an exponent of muscular Christianity, which sought to reinvigorate the church by promoting physical health and manliness. His colorfully worded editorials on subjects such as "the flapper vote" and "modern sex novelists" — which shared the pages of the Sunday Express with gossip, murderers' confessions, and features about the love affairs of great men and women of the past — helped the Express family of papers prosper in the cutthroat circulation wars of the late 20s.[74] The Daily Express is a British newspaper, currently tabloid, and it is owned by Richard Desmond. ...
Muscular Christianity is the view of the Victorian-era English writers Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hughes (though the name was bestowed by others). ...
The term womens suffrage is a social, economic and political reform movement aimed at extending suffrage — the right to vote — to women. ...
| [T]he adroitness and cleverness of the book intensifies its moral danger. It is a seductive and insidious piece of special pleading designed to display perverted decadence as a martyrdom inflicted upon these outcasts by a cruel society. It flings a veil of sentiment over their depravity. It even suggests that their self-made debasement is unavoidable, because they cannot save themselves.
—James Douglas, "A Book That Must Be Suppressed", Sunday Express, August 19, 1928 | Douglas's campaign against The Well of Loneliness began on Saturday, August 18, with poster and billboard advertising and a teaser in the Daily Express promising to expose "A Book That Should Be Suppressed".[75] In his editorial the next day, Douglas wrote that "sexual inversion and perversion" had already become too visible and that the publication of The Well brought home the need for society to "cleans[e] itself from the leprosy of these lepers". For Douglas the sexological view of homosexuality was pseudoscience, incompatible with the Christian doctrine of free will; instead, he argued, homosexuals were damned by their own choice — which meant that others could be corrupted by "their propaganda". Above all, children must be protected: "I 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." He called on the publishers to withdraw the book and the Home Secretary to take action if they did not.[76] Free Will in Theology is an important part of the debate on free will in general. ...
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the United Kingdom Home Office and is responsible for internal affairs in England and Wales, and for immigration and citizenship for the whole United Kingdom (including Scotland and Northern Ireland). ...
In what Hall described as an act of "imbecility coupled with momentary panic", Jonathan Cape sent a copy of The Well to the Home Secretary for his opinion, offering to withdraw the book if it would be in the public interest to do so. The Home Secretary was William Joynson-Hicks, a Conservative known for his crackdowns on alcohol, nightclubs, and gambling, as well as for his opposition to a revised version of The Book of Common Prayer. He took only two days to reply that The Well was "gravely detrimental to the public interest"; if Cape did not withdraw it voluntarily, criminal proceedings would be brought.[77] William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford 23 June 1865-8 June 1932, popularly known as Jix, was a UK Conservative politician, most known for his tenure as Home Secretary during which he gained a reputation for strict authoritarianism. ...
The Conservative Party (officially the Conservative and Unionist Party) is the second largest political party in the United Kingdom in terms of sitting Members of Parliament (MPs), the largest in terms of public membership, and is the second oldest extant political party in the world. ...
The Book of Common Prayer is the prayer book of the Church of England and also the name for similar books used in other churches in the Anglican Communion. ...
Cape announced that he had stopped publication, but he secretly leased the rights to Pegasus Press, an English language publisher in France. His partner Wren Howard took papier-mâché molds of the type to Paris, and by September 28, Pegasus Press was shipping its edition to the London bookseller Leopold Hill, who acted as distributor. With publicity increasing demand, sales were brisk, but the reappearance of The Well on bookstore shelves soon came to the attention of the Home Office. On October 3 Joynson-Hicks issued a warrant for shipments of the book to be seized.[78] Papier-mâché around a form such as a balloon to create a pig. ...
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
One consignment of 250 copies was stopped at Dover. Then the Chairman of the Board of Customs balked. He had read The Well and considered it a fine book, not at all obscene; he wanted no part of suppressing it. On October 19 he released the seized copies for delivery to Leopold Hill's premises, where the Metropolitan Police were waiting with a search warrant. Hill and Cape were summoned to appear at Bow Street Magistrates' Court to show cause why the book should not be destroyed.[79] Metropolitan Police redirects here. ...
Bow Street Magistrates Court has been the most famous magistrates court in England for much of its existence. ...
Response From its beginning, the Sunday Express's campaign drew the attention of other papers. Some backed Douglas, including the Sunday Chronicle, the People, and Truth.[80] The Daily News and Westminster Gazette ran a review that, without commenting on Douglas's action, said the novel "present[ed] as a martyr a woman in the grip of a vice".[81] However, most of the British press defended The Well.[82] The Nation suggested that the Sunday Express had only started its campaign because it was August, the journalistic silly season when good stories are scarce.[82] Country Life and Lady's Pictorial both ran positive reviews.[83] Arnold Dawson of the Daily Herald, a Labour newspaper, called Douglas a "stunt journalist"; he said no one would give the book to a child, no child would want to read it, and any who did would find nothing harmful.[84] Dawson also printed a scathing condemnation of the Home Office by H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw and started a counter-campaign that helped Hall obtain statements of support from the National Union of Railwaymen and the South Wales Miners' Federation.[85] The silly season is the period lasting for a few months (starting in mid- to late summer) in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia typified by the emergence of frivolous news stories in the media. ...
The Daily Herald was a London newspaper. ...
The Labour Party has been, since its founding in the early 20th century, the principal political party of the left in England, Scotland and Wales. ...
H. G. Wells at the door of his house at Sandgate Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866 - August 13, 1946) was an English writer best known for his science fiction novels such as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. ...
George Bernard Shaw (born 26 July 1856, Dublin, Ireland died November 2, 1950, Hertfordshire, England) was an Irish writer. ...
| A novelist may not wish to treat any of the subjects mentioned above but the sense that they are prohibited or prohibitable, that there is a taboo-list, will work on him and will make him alert and cautious instead of surrendering himself to his creative impulses. And he will tend to cling to subjects that are officially acceptable, such as murder and adultery, and to shun anything original lest it bring him into forbidden areas.
—E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, Letter to the Nation and Athenaeum[86] | Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster drafted a letter of protest against the suppression of The Well, assembling a list of supporters that included Shaw, T.S. Eliot, Arnold Bennett, Vera Brittain, and Ethel Smyth. According to Virginia Woolf, the plan broke down when Hall objected to the wording of the letter, insisting it mention her book's "artistic merit — even genius".[87] The Well's sentimental romanticism, traditional form, and lofty style — using words like withal, betoken, and hath — did not appeal to Modernist aesthetics; not all those willing to defend it on grounds of literary freedom were equally willing to praise its artistry.[88] The petition dwindled to a short letter in the Nation and Athenaeum, signed by Forster and Virginia Woolf, that focused on the chilling effects of censorship on writers.[86] Leonard Woolf (November 25, 1880 – August 14, 1969) married Virginia Woolf in 1912. ...
Edward Morgan Forster, OM, (January 1, 1879 – June 7, 1970) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. ...
Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965), was a major Modernist Anglo-American poet, dramatist, and literary critic. ...
Arnold Bennett, British novelist Enoch Arnold Bennett (May 27, 1867-March 27, 1931) was a British novelist. ...
Vera Mary Brittain, Lady Catlin (1893 – March 29, 1970) was an English writer, feminist and pacifist, best remembered as the author of the best-selling memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during the First World War and the growth of her ideology of specifically Anglican Christian pacifism. ...
John Singer Sargent: Ethel Smyth, 1901 Dame Ethel Mary Smyth [1] (April 23, 1858 - May 8, 1944) was an English composer and a leader of the womens suffrage movement. ...
For the American childrens writer, see Virginia Euwer Wolff Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ...
This article focuses on the cultural movement labeled modernism or the modern movement. See also: Modernism (Roman Catholicism) or Modernist Christianity; Modernismo for specific art movement(s) in Spain and Catalonia. ...
The New Statesman is a left-of-centre political weekly published in London. ...
Chilling Effects is a collaboration between several law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to protect lawful online activity from legal threats. ...
UK trial Cape's solicitor Harold Rubinstein sent out 160 letters to potential witnesses. Many were reluctant to appear in court; according to Virginia Woolf, "they generally put it down to the weak heart of a father, or a cousin who is about to have twins".[89] About 40 turned up on the day of the trial, including Woolf herself, Forster, and such diverse figures as biologist Julian Huxley, Laurence Housman of the British Sexological Society, Robert Cust JP of the London Morality Council, Charles Ricketts of the Royal Academy of Art, and Rabbi Joseph Frederick Stern of the East London Synagogue. None were allowed to offer their views of the novel. Under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, Chief Magistrate Sir Chartres Biron could and did decide whether the book was obscene without hearing any testimony on the question.[90] "I don't think people are entitled to express an opinion upon a matter which is the decision of the court", he said.[91] Since Hall herself was not on trial, she did not have the right to her own counsel, and Cape's barrister Norman Birkett had persuaded her not to take the stand herself.[90] A solicitor is a type of lawyer in many common law jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but not the United States (in the United States the word has a quite different meaning—see below). ...
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley, FRS (June 22, 1887 – February 14, 1975) was a English biologist, author, Humanist and internationalist, known for his popularisations of science in books and lectures. ...
Charles De Sousy Ricketts (1866 - 1931) was a versatile English artist and designer, best known for his work as book designer and typographer from 1896 to 1904 with the Vale Press, and his work in the theatre as a set designer. ...
This article refers to an art institution in London. ...
Rabbi, in Judaism, means ‘teacher’, or more literally ‘great one’. The word Rabbi is derived from the Hebrew root word , rav, which in biblical Hebrew means ‘great’ or ‘distinguished (in knowledge)’. Sephardic and Yemenite Jews pronounce this word ribbī; the modern Israeli pronunciation rabbī is derived from a recent (18th...
Since 1857, a series of obscenity laws known as the Obscene Publications Acts have governed what can be published. ...
This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...
(William) Norman Birkett, 1st Baron Birkett (September 6, 1883 - February 10, 1962) was a noted British Barrister and judge who served as the alternate British Judge during the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Norman Birkett KC MP in 1930 Norman Birkett was a native of Ulverston near Barrow-in...
Birkett arrived in court two hours late.[92] In his defense, he tried to claim that the relationships between women in The Well of Loneliness were purely Platonic in nature. Biron replied, "I have read the book." Hall, who before the trial had urged Birkett not to "sell the inverts in our defense", took advantage of a lunch recess to tell him that if he continued to maintain her book had no lesbian content she would stand up in court and tell the magistrate the truth before anyone could stop her. Birkett was forced to retract. He argued instead that the book was tasteful and possessed a high degree of literary merit.[93] James Melville, appearing for Leopold Hill, took a similar line: the book was "written in a reverend spirit", not to inspire libidinous thoughts but to examine a social question. The theme itself should not be forbidden, and the book's treatment of its theme was unexceptionable.[94] Sir James Benjamin Melville (20 April 1885 – 1 May 1931) was a Labour Party politician in the United Kingdom. ...
| [Stephen] writes to her mother in these terms: "You insulted what to me is natural and sacred." "What to me is sacred"? Natural and sacred! Then I am asked to say that this book is in no sense a defense of unnatural practices between women, or a glorification, or a praise of them, to put it perhaps not quite so strongly. "Natural" and "Sacred"! "Good" repeated three times.
—Sir Chartres Biron's judgment[95] | In his judgment Biron applied the Hicklin test of obscenity: a work was obscene if it tended to "deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences". He held that the book's literary merit was irrelevant because a well-written obscene book was even more harmful than a poorly written one. The topic in itself was not necessarily unacceptable; a book that depicted the "moral and physical degradation which indulgence in those vices must necessary involve" might be allowed, but no reasonable person could say that a plea for the recognition and toleration of inverts was not obscene. He ordered the book destroyed, with the defendants to pay court costs.[96] The Hicklin test is a legal concept, from the 1868 English case - Regina v. ...
Appeal Hill and Cape appealed to the London Court of Quarter Sessions.[97] The prosecutor, Attorney General Sir Thomas Inskip, solicited testimony from biological and medical experts and from the writer Rudyard Kipling. But when Kipling appeared on the morning of the trial, Inskip told him he would not be needed. James Melville had wired the defense witnesses the night before to tell them not to come in. The panel of twelve magistrates who heard the appeal had to rely on passages Inskip read to them for knowledge of the book, since the Director of Public Prosecutions had refused to release copies for them to read. After deliberating for only five minutes, they upheld Biron's decision.[98] The Courts of Quarter Sessions or Quarter Sessions were periodic courts held in each county and county borough in England and Wales until 1972, when together with the Assize courts they were abolished by the Courts Act 1971 and replaced by a single permanent Crown Court of England and Wales. ...
In most common law jurisdictions, the Attorney General is the main legal adviser to the government, and in some jurisdictions may in addition have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions. ...
Thomas Walker Hobart Inskip, 1st Viscount Caldecote was a British politician who served in many legal posts, culminating in serving as Lord Chancellor from 1939 until 1940. ...
This article is about the British author. ...
The Sink of Solitude
 In "St. Stephen", one of Beresford Egan's illustrations for The Sink of Solitude, Radclyffe Hall is nailed to a cross. Joynson-Hicks looks on, with a copy of The Well in his pocket, while Cupid makes a derisive gesture and Sappho leaps across the scene. The Sink of Solitude, an anonymous lampoon in verse by "several hands", appeared in late 1928. It satirized both sides of the controversy over The Well of Loneliness, but its primary targets were Douglas and Joynson-Hicks, "Two Good Men — never mind their intellect".[99] Though the introduction, by journalist P. R. Stephensen, described The Well's moral argument as "feeble" and dismissed Havelock Ellis as a "psychopath", The Sink itself endorsed the view that lesbianism was innate: Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
One of Beresford Egans illustrations for The Sink of Solitude, a satire of Radclyffe Halls The Well of Loneliness. ...
Though SAPPHO burned with a peculiar flame
God understands her, we must do the same,
And of such eccentricities we say
"'Tis true, 'tis pity: she was made that way."[100] Ancient Greek bust. ...
It portrayed Hall, however, as a humorless moralist who had a great deal in common with the opponents of her novel.[99] One illustration, picking up on the theme of religious martyrdom in The Well, showed Hall nailed to a cross. The image horrified Hall; her 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.[101]
US publication and trial Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. had planned to publish The Well of Loneliness in the United States at the same time as Cape in the United Kingdom. But after Cape moved up the publication date, Knopf found itself in the position of publishing a book that had already been withdrawn in its home country. They refused, telling Hall that nothing they could do would keep the book from being treated as pornography.[102] Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. ...
Cape sold the US rights to the recently formed publishing house of Pascal Covici and Donald Friede. Friede had heard gossip about The Well at a party at Theodore Dreiser's house and immediately decided to acquire it. He had previously sold a copy of Dreiser's An American Tragedy to a Boston police officer in order to create a censorship test case, which he had lost; he was awaiting an appeal, which he would also lose. He took out a $10,000 bank loan to outbid another publisher that had offered a $7,500 advance, and enlisted Morris Ernst, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, to defend the book against legal challenges. Friede invited John Saxton Sumner of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice to buy a copy directly from him, to ensure that he, not a bookseller, would be the one prosecuted. He also travelled to Boston to give a copy to the Watch and Ward Society, hoping both to further challenge censorship of literature and to generate more publicity; he was disappointed when they told him they saw nothing wrong with the book.[102] Pascal Pat Avram Covici (November 4, 1885-October 14, 1964) was a Romanian Jewish-American book publisher and editor. ...
Theodore Dreiser, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933 Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American naturalist author known for dealing with the gritty reality of life. ...
An American Tragedy is a famous American novel, by Theodore Dreiser. ...
Morris Leopold Ernst (1888 – 1976) was an American lawyer and co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. ...
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a major American non-profit organization with headquarters in New York City, whose stated mission is to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.[1] It...
The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (SSV) was founded in 1873 by Anthony Comstock and his supporters in the Young Mens Christian Association. ...
The Watch and Ward Society was a Boston, Massachusetts organization involved in the censorship of books and the performing arts from the late 19th Century to the middle of the 20th Century. ...
 The symbol of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, depicting book burning In New York, Sumner and several police detectives seized 865 copies of The Well from the publisher's offices, and Friede was charged with selling an obscene publication. But Covici and Friede had already moved the printing plates out of New York in order to continue publishing the book. By the time the case came to trial, it had already been reprinted six times. Despite its price of $5 — twice the cost of an average novel — it would sell over 100,000 copies in its first year.[102] Image File history File links NewYorkSocietyForTheSuppressionOfVice. ...
Image File history File links NewYorkSocietyForTheSuppressionOfVice. ...
Book burning is the practice of ceremoniously destroying by fire one or more copies of a book or other written material. ...
In the US, as in the UK, the Hicklin test of obscenity applied, but New York case law had established that books should be judged by their effects on adults rather than on children and that literary merit was relevant.[102] Ernst obtained statements from authors including Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, H. L. Mencken, Upton Sinclair, Ellen Glasgow, and John Dos Passos.[103] To make sure these supporters did not go unheard, he incorporated their opinions into his brief. His argument relied on a comparison with Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier, which had been cleared of obscenity in the 1922 case Halsey v. New York. Mademoiselle de Maupin described a lesbian relationship in more explicit terms than The Well did. According to Ernst, The Well had greater social value because it was more serious in tone and made a case against misunderstanding and intolerance.[102] Case law (precedential law) is the body of judge-made law and legal decisions that interprets prior case law, statutes and other legal authority -- including doctrinal writings by legal scholars such as the Corpus Juris Secundum, Halsburys Laws of England or the doctinal writings found in the Recueil Dalloz...
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. ...
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American Jazz Age author of novels and short stories. ...
Edna St. ...
Sinclair Lewis Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 — January 10, 1951) was an American novelist and playwright. ...
Sherwood Anderson in 1933. ...
i still feel like being nice H.L. Mencken who: journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, what: most influential American writers of the early 20th century. ...
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. ...
Ellen Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow (April 22, 1873 - November 21, 1945) was a Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist from Richmond, Virginia. ...
John Rodrigo Dos Passos (January 14, 1896 — September 28, 1970) was an important Portuguese-American novelist and artist. ...
Brief redirects here. ...
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier (August 31, 1811 - October 23, 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist and literary critic. ...
In an opinion issued on February 19, 1929, Magistrate Hyman Bushel declined to take the book's literary qualities into account and said The Well was "calculated to deprave and corrupt minds open to its immoral influences". Under New York law, however, Bushel was not a trier of fact; he could only remand the case to the New York Court of Special Sessions for judgment. On April 19, that court issued a three-paragraph decision stating that The Well's theme — a "delicate social problem" — did not violate the law unless written in such a way as to make it obscene. After "a careful reading of the entire book", they cleared it of all charges.[102] February 19 is the 50th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...
A trier of fact is the person or group of persons in a trial who make findings of fact as opposed to rulings of law. ...
Covici-Friede then imported a copy of the Pegasus Press edition from France as a further test case and to solidify the book's U.S. copyright.[102] Customs barred the book from entering the country, which might also have have prevented it from being shipped from state to state.[104] The United States Customs Court, however, ruled that the book did not contain "one word, phrase, sentence or paragraph which could be truthfully pointed out as offensive to modesty".[105] Federal courts Supreme Court Chief Justice Associate Justices Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Political Parties Democratic Republican Third parties State & Local government Governors Legislatures (List) State Courts Counties/Parishes/Boroughs, Cities, and Towns Other countries Politics Portal A U.S. state is any one of the fifty subnational entities of...
The United States Court of International Trade is an Article III court, with full powers in law and equity. ...
Subsequent publication and availability
 Paperback editions of The Well became available in the 1950s. This 1951 cover describes the book as "the strange love story of a girl who stood midway between the sexes". The Pegasus Press edition of the book remained available in France, and some copies made their way into the UK. In a "Letter from Paris" in The New Yorker, Janet Flanner reported that it sold most heavily at the news vendor's cart that served passengers travelling to London on La Fleche D'Or.[106] Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...
The New Yorker is an American magazine that publishes reportage, criticism, essays, cartoons, poetry and fiction. ...
Janet Flanner (March 13, 1892 - November 7, 1978) was a child of Quakers, an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975 [1]. She also published a single novel, The Cubical City, set in New York...
The Golden Arrow was a luxury train of the Southern Railway and later British Railways that linked London with Dover, where passengers took the ferry to Calais to join the Flèche d’Or that took them onto Paris. ...
In 1946, three years after Hall's death, Troubridge wanted to include The Well in a Collected Memorial Edition of Hall's works. Peter Davies of the Windmill Press wrote to the Home Office's legal advisor to ask whether the post-war Labour administration would allow the book to be republished. Unknown to Troubridge, however, he added a postscript saying "I am not really anxious to do The Well of Loneliness and am rather relieved than otherwise by any lack of enthusiasm I may encounter in official circles." Home Secretary James Chuter Ede told Troubridge that any publisher reprinting the book would risk prosecution.[107] In 1949, however, Falcon Press brought out an edition with no legal challenge.[108] The Well has been in print continuously ever since and has been translated into at least 14 languages.[109] In the 1960s it was still selling 100,000 copies a year in the United States alone.[110] Looking back on the controversy in 1972, Flanner remarked on how unlikely it seemed that a "rather innocent" book like The Well could have created such a scandal.[106] In 1974, it was read to the British public on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.[111] James Chuter Ede, Baron Chuter-Ede was a British politician, born in Epsom, Surrey. ...
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station which broadcasts a wide variety of chiefly spoken-word programmes including news, drama, comedy, science and history. ...
Book at Bedtime is a long running radio programme on BBC Radio 4, broadcast each weekday evening at 10. ...
Other 1928 lesbian novels Three other novels with lesbian themes were published in England in 1928: Elizabeth Bowen's The Hotel, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, and Compton MacKenzie's satirical novel Extraordinary Women. None of them were banned.[112] The Hotel, like earlier English novels in which critics have identified lesbian themes, is marked by complete reticence,[112] while Orlando may have been protected by its Modernist playfulness.[113] The Home Office considered prosecuting Extraordinary Women, but concluded that it lacked the "earnestness" of The Well and would not inspire readers to adopt "the practices referred to".[114] Mackenzie was disappointed; he had hoped a censorship case would increase his book's sales.[115] Despite advertising that tried to cash in on the controversy over The Well by announcing that Radclyffe Hall was the model for one of the characters,[116] it sold only 2,000 copies.[117] Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen (7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. ...
For the American childrens writer, see Virginia Euwer Wolff Virginia Woolf (née Stephen) (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. ...
Orlando is a novel by Virginia Woolf, first published in 1928. ...
Sir (Edward Montague) Compton Mackenzie, (1883–1972), was an Scottish novelist. ...
A fourth 1928 novel, Ladies Almanack by the American writer Djuna Barnes, not only contains a character based on Radclyffe Hall but includes passages that may be a response to The Well.[118] Ladies Almanack is a roman à clef of a lesbian literary and artistic circle in Paris, written in an archaic,
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