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by Radclyff Hall
The Well of Loneliness is a lesbian novel by 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.
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 typically suffered by inverts, with predictably debilitating effects.
Publicity over The Well of Loneliness's legal battles increased the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture. For decades it was the best-known lesbian novel in English, and often the first source of information about lesbianism that young people could find.
Although critics differ as to the value of The Well of Loneliness as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate.
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This information about The Well of Loneliness was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name John, rather than Marguerite.
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