Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall (actually Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall , born August 12, 1880 in Bournemouth , Dorset , † October 7, 1943 in Dolphin Square , Pimlico , London ) was a British poet and writer. She wrote eight novels, including the well-known novel, The Well of Loneliness , about the lesbian Stephen Gordon .

Mabel Batten sings while John Singer Sargent paints a portrait of her, circa 1897.

Life

Radclyffe Hall was born in Bournemouth ( Dorset ) as the second daughter of Radclyffe Radclyffe-Hall (1846–1898) and his American wife Mary Jane Sager (née Diehl) (1854–1945). Since her sister died as a toddler, she grew up as an only child. She attended King's College London and then moved to Germany.

In 1907 she met the singer Mabel Batten in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe . Batten and Radclyffe Hall fell in love, and after Batten's husband died, Radclyffe Hall and Batten moved in together. Batten nicknamed Radclyffe Hall John , which she used for the rest of her life. In 1915, Radclyffe Hall fell in love with Una Troubridge (1887-1963), a cousin of Batten who had a daughter with her husband, Admiral Ernest Troubridge. When Mabel Batten died in 1916, Radclyffe Hall and Una Troubridge lived together from 1917. The relationship lasted until the death of Radclyffe Hall in 1943. During their relationship, she had love affairs with Russian immigrant Evguenia Souline and blues singer Ethel Waters .

Hall moved to London and lived with Una Troubridge in the small town of Rye , East Sussex , in the 1930s . In 1930 she received the Gold Medal from the Eichelbergher Humane Award . Radclyffe Hall was a member of the Pen Club writers' association , the Council of the Society for Psychical Research and a member of the Zoological Society of London .

Radclyffe Hall died of cancer at the age of 63 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London.

Novels

Radclyffe Hall's first novel was The Unlit Lamp , the story of Joan Ogden , a young girl who dreams of building a house in London with her friend Elizabeth and becoming a doctor. The fictional character Joan Ogden feels trapped by her scheming mother, on whom she is emotionally dependent. Her second novel, The Forge , was a social comedy. The novel made it onto John O'London's Weekly list.

Another novel, A Saturday Life , followed in 1925 and then Adam's Breed in 1926. This novel describes an Italian head waiter who is dissatisfied with his job, gives up his ties and lives as a hermit in the forest. The mystical themes in this novel have been compared to Hermann Hesse's novel Siddhartha . The novel sold very well, was critically acclaimed in England and won both the Prix ​​Femina and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize . Only the novel A Passage to India by Edward Morgan Forster achieved this double literary honor .

Following Adam's Breed , Radclyffe Hall wrote her best-known novel The Well of Loneliness , published in 1928. The novel is about the character Stephen Gordon , a masculine lesbian. The novel managed to present lesbian love in natural truth during its time in London and increased social tolerance in England. Although The Well of Loneliness has no explicit sexual content, the novel was the subject of a court hearing for "profanity". The verdict ordered the destruction of all copies of the novel. In the United States of America, the novel was only allowed to appear after a long legal process. The novel is currently published by Virago Press in the United Kingdom and Anchor Press in the United States of America.

During the legal and social controversy surrounding her book The Well of Loneliness , an anonymous parody titled The Sink of Solitude appeared . The main targets of the parody were James Douglas , who had called for the novel to be censored, and Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks , who had sought the trial. But Radclyffe Hall herself and her book were also attacked in it: One of the illustrations showed Radclyffe Hall nailed to a cross. These attacks frightened her, but led to her decision to write her next novel on a religious subject. The novel was titled The Master of the House . The book's initial sales were massive, and the novel made it to # 1 on the Observer's bestseller list . But the novel received poor reviews in several major magazines, and further sales of the novel declined. In the US, literary critics treated him more kindly, but shortly after the US publication, copies of the novel were no longer available due to the bankruptcy of the publisher. The US rights to the novel were sold to Hoghton Mifflin, but in the meantime, as the time passed before it was reprinted, the promising timing of the sale was lost.

On September 26, 1997, Radclyffe Hall was named 16th in the Top 500 LGBT Heroes by The Pink Paper newspaper in its 500th edition.

Works

Novels

• The Forge (1924)
• The Unlit Lamp (1924)
• A Saturday Life (1925)
• Adam's Breed (1926)
• The Well of Loneliness (1928)
• The Master of the House (1932)
• Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (1934)
• The Sixth Beatitude (William Heineman Ltd., London, 1936)

Poems

• The Forgotten Island (London: Chapman & Hall, 1915)
• Dedicated to Sir Arthur Sullivan (England: sn, 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, Ltd. 1913)
• Rhymes and Rhythms (Milan, 1948)

literature

• Troubridge, Una (1961): The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall (London: Hammond)
• Baker, M. (1985): Our Three Selves. The Life of Radclyffe Hall (New York: William Morrow)
• Glasgow, Joanne (1997): Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall (New York University Press)
• Souhami, Diana (1998): The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Cline, Sally (1999): Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John (Overlook Press)

Web links

• Literature by and about Radclyffe Hall in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography, Literature & Sources for Radclyffe Hall FemBio of the Institute for Women's Biography Research
• David Smith: Lesbian novel was danger to nation the guardian , Jan. 2, 2005
• Hall, Radclyffe (1880-1943) Encyclopedia glbtq (Engl.)
• Estate in the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Biography ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at apurnell.com . 
2. ^ Cline, 58-67.
3. ↑ Hall's letters to Souline were published in: Joanne Glasgow (Ed.): Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall . New York University Press, New York 1997, ISBN 0-8147-3125-2 .
4. ↑ Tina Gianoulis, "Ethel Waters" ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , GLBTQ: An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer culture. 
5. ↑ Biographical note in the Virago Press edition of The Well of Loneliness .
6. ↑ Baker, 152-156.
7. ↑ Baker, 164.
8. ↑ Baker, 183-186.
9. ↑ Baker, 196-197.
10. ↑ Baker, 257; Cline, 280.
11. ↑ Baker, 275-276.
12. ↑ Baker, 279-280.
13. ^ The Publishing Triangle's list of the 100 best lesbian and gay novels