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Radclyffe Hall’s novel caused such an uproar in 1928 that the book was banned in England (where a reviewer wrote, “I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel”) and 800 copies were seized by authorities in the United States. What in the book did the censors mainly find objectionable?
- A Atheists
- B Lesbians
- C Communists
- D Satanists
That's Correct!
It's Wrong!
From Thomas Mallon’s 1985 review of two Radclyffe Hall biographies:
“The Well [of Loneliness],” a frank treatment of lesbianism and a plea for its toleration (“Acknowledge us, oh God, before the whole world. Give us also the right to our existence!”), was, after stormy proceedings in Bow Street Magistrates Court, successfully suppressed by the Home Secretary in accordance with the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, achieving for Radclyffe Hall a sexual and literary martyrdom that Michael Baker, in his fine new biography “Our Three Selves,” convinces us she craved.
