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Radclyffe Hall

The Knitting Circle: Literature

Biography,work, (poetry,novels),bibliography,press cuttings.

Born Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall, the daughter of Radclyffe Radclyffe-Hall. She was known as Peter as a child but later called herself John, probably after her great-grandfather whom she strongly resembled.

She was educated at King's College, London, and then in Germany.

Between 1906 and 1915 she published five volumes of poetry, mostly about "e;that potent passion, that divine desire"e; which she felt for women. Several of her verses were set to music, some by Coleridge Taylor. Her most famous song wasThe Blind Ploughman, with music by Coningsby Clarke.

In 1907 the poetry brought her to the attention of the 50-year-oldMabel Batten, who was married with a grown-up daughter. They fell in love and set up home together when Batten's husband died.

In 1915 Radclyffe Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's cousin,Una Troubridge(1887-1963), a sculptor who was married to an admiral and had a young daughter. Mabel Batten died in 1915, and in 1917 Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge began living together. A black and white photograph showing Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge together c1927 is reproduced inJivani (1997), page 29. A back and white photograph of 37 Holland Street, London, W8 where they lived from 1924 to 1929, and where most ofThe Well of Lonelinesswas written, is reproduced inElliman and Roll, (1986), page 93.

In the 1920s she began writing novels and writing under the name of Radclyffe Hall. HerAdam's Breedin 1926, was the only novel, apart from E. M. Forster'sA Passage to India, to be awarded both the Prix Femina and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

In 1928 she wroteThe Well of Loneliness, the first undisguised lesbian novel and largely autobiographical. This caused a storm and James Douglas, the editor of theSunday Express, declared in a front-page article, "e;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."e; (A facsimile of part of a subsequent article in theDaily Expressis shown inJivani (1997), page 36.) The book was banned in Britain but Jonathan Cape sent the type-moulds to Paris where Pegasus Press published it. Copies were sent all over the world including Britain where Customs seized copies on the way to Leonard Hill's bookshop in Great Russell Street. Leonard Hill was charged, and defence lawyers gathered support for the book from leading intellectuals includingE. M. Forster,Virginia Woolf, and Laurence Housman. However, the magistrate disallowed the evidence as to the merit of the work and ruled that it was an "e;obscene libel"e; and it was suppressed. However the book continued to be published abroad and was very popular, particularly in America. It was translated into eleven languages and sold a million copies during the author's lifetime. The cover of a paperback edition ofThe Well of Lonelinessis reproduced in black and whiteJivani (1997), page 33.

She never repeated this success with her other novels. These, with other works, are listed below. All of her books were dedicated to "e;The three of us"e;, the other two being Mabel Batten and Una Troubridge.

Ground-breaking as it wasThe Well of Loneliness, would now seem dated as it reflects the then current theories of "e;sexual inversion"e; to which Radclyffe Hall subscribed. She also cultivated the stereotype of the masculine lesbian. However the notoriety of her work brought lesbianism to the conscousness of the British public and the rest of the Anglo-Saxon world which had previously been able to largely ignore it.

Radclyffe Hall was listed at number 16 in the top 500 lesbian and gay heroes inThe Pink Paper, 26th. September, 1997, issue 500, page 22.

HerThe Well of Lonelinesswas number 7 of thelist of the top 100 gay bookscompiled in the USA in 1999.

See also thewebsiteof the publisher Virago: http://www.virago.co.uk

• The following poem is re-published byStephen Coote, (1983).

  • As a lamp of fine crystal, wonderfully wrought, page 290, (fromForgotten Island).

• Twixt Earth and Stars, 1906

• Poems of the Past & Present, 1910, a volume of verse.

• Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems, 1913, a volume of verse.

• The Forgotten Island, 1915, a volume of verse.

• Rhymes and Rhythms, Milan, 1948, a volume of verse.

• The Forge, 1924.

• The Unlit Lamp, 1924.

• A Saturday Life, 1925.

• Adam's Breed, 1926.

• The Well of Loneliness, 1928.
  • Published 1952, Falcon Press,SBU library Main Bookstock 823.91
  • Published 1982, Virago Press.

• The Master of the House, 1932.

• Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself, 1934.
  Reproduced inThe Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories.

• The Sixth Beatitude, 1936.

• Michael Baker, (1985), "e;Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall"e;, New York: William Morrow.

• Sally Cline, (1997), "e;Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John"e;, John Murray, 434 pages, ISBN 0 7195 5408 X
  Shadowy corners in the Hall of fame, by Andrea Dworkin, inThe Times Higher Education Supplement, 12th. September, 1997, No. 1,297, page 23. "e;Is there a reason that so many rich, upperclass lesbians whose lives spanned both world wars were pro-fascist? Certainly Radclyffe Hall and her friends - the writer Natalie Barney (who gave Ezra Pound the radio transmitter from which he broadcast his pro-fascist rants), the painter Romaine Brooks, the playwright Gabriele D'Annunzio - formed a pro-fascist cultural cadre. In Sally Cline's new biography of Hall, this pro-fascism is ethereal, not part of the texture of Hall's life. And Cline offers an apologia: Hall's 'crusade on behalf of lesbians had not yet led her to empathise with other persecuted groups'. Nor would it. The difficult question is not asked: why has lesbian emancipation been compatible in the lives of elite women with fascism? Is this group so privileged and so distinct that democracy is repugnant: or, in Hall's case, did the brutality in her childhood create an allegiance to dominance and authoritarian contral?"e;

  "e;The struggle of the artist who is born a lesbian and stigmatised for her masculinity is at the heart ofThe Well of Loneliness."e;

  "e;InThe Well of LonelinessHall posits that lesbians are born, not made; that same-sex desire is tragic because of the larger society's hostility; that the 'loneliest place in the world is the no-man's land of sex'; that the masculine lesbian affronts society by wanting male privilege. Influenced byHavelock Ellis,Krafft-Ebing,Hirschfeld, andCarpenter, she accepted and furthered what Cline calls the 'medical colonisation of sexuality'. Making lesbianism more visible, she helped destroy the protective cover of socially accepted romantic friendships between women. Ironically this increased clarity led to viewing homosexuality as a disease. Her vocabulary may have become archaic, but her stance was prescient and brave."e;

  "e;Except for her advocacy of homosexual rights, her politics were ugly. She renounced her support of female suffrage when, on the heels of a threatened miners' strike in 1912, hundreds of militant women fought police in the streets of London and smashed windows. 'Have the Suffragettes no spark of patriotism left, that they can spread revolt and hamper the government in this moment of grave national danger?' she wrote in an anonymous letter to thePall Mall Gazette. A trip to Florence in 1921 similarly brought her into contact with Fascists and Communists fighting in the streets; and for her the Fascists were the good guys. She was deeply anti-Semitic: 'I believe the Jews hate us and want to bring about a European War and then a World revolution in order to destroy us utterly'. Her hatred was explicit. 'Jews! Jews! Jews!' she wrote in 1938. 'Millions of them trying to push their way into England . . .'. By 1942 knowledge of mass deportations of Jews in France made her queasy: 'the wholesale slaughter of the Jews is too fearful, the more so as one feels helpless to do anything for the poor devils . . .'."e;

  "e;Cline's biography is conceptually sophisticated and conveys the emotional complexity of this brave and troubled woman. But I am distressed by the idealisation of Hall - her place (with Barney et al) as icon in lesbian and feminist mythology. Pro-fascism is not just a weird tic or an odd hobby or a slightly bizarre attitude. It goes to the heart of one's conception of humanity; and therefore one must ask - why is lesbian liberation so comfortable with fascism? Or, put more optimistically, why was it?"e;

• Paul Elliott Russell, (1994), "e;The Gay 100"e;

• Elliman and Roll, (1986), pages 92-93.

• Diana Souhami, (1998), "e;The Trials of Radclyffe Hall"e;. Weidenfeld, 356 pages.
  • Girls will be boysby Karen Robinson inThe Sunday Times Books, 2nd. August, 1998, page 5. "e;Anyone who has attempted to plough through Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness would probably agree withVirginia Woolf's acerbic assessment of its author's fictional plea for the cause of lesbianism: 'the dullness of the book . . . one simply can't keep one's eyes on the page'."e;

    "e;The media brouhaha ensured the book and its author a place in the pantheon of artists martyred for their cause. As Diana Souhami reveals, Hall was a victim of covert Establishment manipulation of the law, of 'the Old Boys, their intrigue, misogyny and terror of sex . . . fools and bigots of their time, puffed with power, tainted with prejudice . . . '."e;

    "e;Hall was a ghastly woman. Humourless, autocratic, spoilt, egostistical and without one act of selfless humanity to her credit. Hall presents the most sympathetic biographer with serious empathy problems. Even her lesbianism was elitist and self-referential. She was a 'congenital sexual invert', her companion, the equally unpleasant, monocle-toting Una, Lady Troubridge, was an 'invert's mate', and the lesbian circles in which they moved 'with their fine houses stylish lovers, inherited incomes, sparkling careers and villas in the sun' were hardly among the most oppressed people in the world - nor did they need an apologist for their relationships and lfestyle."e;

  • Don't let the skirt fool you . . .by Stephanie Merritt inThe Observer Review, 9th. August, 1998, page 16. "e;A week before her book went to press, Souhami was granted access to previously unreleased government papers, thus confirming her theory of a misogynistic conspiracy perpetrated by a male oligarchy: the Home Secretary, Lord Chancellor, Chief Magistrate and Director of Public Prosecutions were all, apparently, in clandestine correspondence about the case. Gross male prejudice and moral bigotry were unquestionably at work, but what is ironic, as Souhami shows, is that Radclyffe Hall should have become such an anti-establishment figure for later generations of lesbians."e;

• Claudia Stillman Franks, (1982), "e;Beyond the Well of Loneliness: The Fiction of Radclyffe Hall"e;, Avebury.

• Gillian Whitlock, (1987), "e; 'Everything is Out of Place': Radclyffe Hall and the Lesbian Literary Tradition"e;, Feminist Studies, vol. 13, pages 555-82.

• In a small note on the front page of the 5th. April, 1996, issue 424 ofThe Pink Paper, it is reported that, "e;Oscar winner Emma Thompson is set to star in a film adaption of Radclyffe Hall's lesbian romance novel, The Well of Loneliness. The book, first published in 1928, focused on a young lesbian, Stephen, and her first doomed love affair."e;

Biography,work, (poetry,novels),bibliography,press cuttings.

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First uploaded 21st. February, 1996

Last altered 21st. August, 2003