The Trials of Radclyffe Hall - Hardcover

An incisive account of the life and works of the author of the groundbreaking and controversial 1928 lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, discusses her politically reactionary stance, her relations with her family and with other literary figures, and much more.

inary life of a great English eccentric and author, as seen by one of England's leading biographers.

A fascinating figure of English literary and political history, Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 in Bournemouth, England. Hall suffered through an exceedingly unhappy childhood until her father's death. With her inheritance, Hall leased a house in Kensington and began to live the way she pleased. She started dressing in chappish clothes, called herself Peter, then John, and wrote her first collection of verse. She was a political reactionary, a reformed Catholic, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, fussy about food and obsessive about work. She got her pipes from Dunhill's, wore brocade smoking jackets, spats in winter, and had her hair cropped off at the barber's.

Hall is most famous today for her book, The Well of Loneliness, which she wrote in 1928. A novel about lesbian love, the book caused an enormous scandal on its publication and it was suppress