Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness

Rebecca Jennings (Macquarie University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Newman University), Louise McDonald (Newman University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1928

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Well of Loneliness, first published in 1928, was the fifth novel by Radclyffe Hall. Her first two novels, The Forge (1924) and The Unlit Lamp (1924), both explored the issue of relationships between women, but The Well of Loneliness was the first to explicitly address the concept of female sexual inversion. The novel was intended to be a plea for social toleration on behalf of sexual inverts and Radclyffe Hall informed her publisher: “I am proud indeed to have taken up my pen in defence of those who are utterly defenceless, who being from birth a people set apart in accordance with some hidden scheme of Nature, need all the help that society can give them” (Souhami, 167-8). At the time of …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2837 words

Citation: Jennings, Rebecca. "The Well of Loneliness". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 June 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8122, accessed 24 November 2024.]

Save this article