The Well of Loneliness

By Radclyffe Hall

The Well of Loneliness is the fifth and best-known novel by English author and poet Radclyffe Hall. Becoming a runaway bestseller in its notoriety, it was originally banned by the British after a legal trial and all copies were ordered to be destroyed due to its lesbian plot and characters. After years and appeals, the novel’s ban was overturned, and today it remains one of the most formative and influential lesbian works of the twentieth century.
      The novel tells the story of a tomboyish and aristocratic Stephen, who hunts, wears pants, and cuts her hair short—and comes to realize she’s attracted to women. She grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer, and a loyal lover. But while Stephen’s ambitious drive her, society confines her, and she’s forced into desperate actions.

Penguin Random House Canada is proud to bring you classic works of literature in e-book form, with the highest quality production values. Find more today and rediscover books you never knew you loved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780735253933

Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall (1880-1943) was an English poet and novelist. Born to a wealthy English father and an American mother in Bournemouth, Hampshire, Hall was left a sizeable fortune following her parents’ separation in 1882. Raised in a troubled environment, Hall struggled to gain financial independence from her mother and stepfather. As she took control of her inheritance, Hall began dressing in men’s clothing and identifying herself as a “congenital invert.” In 1907, she began a relationship with amateur singer Mabel Batten, who encouraged Hall to pursue a career in literature. By 1917, she had fallen in love with sculptor Una Troubridge, a cousin of Batten’s. After several poetry collections, Hall’s second novel The Unlit Lamp (1924) was published, becoming a bestseller shortly thereafter. Adam’s Breed (1926), a novel about an Italian waiter who abandons modern life, earned Hall the Prix Femina and the James Tait Black Prize, two of the most prestigious awards in world literature. In 1928, Hall’s sixth novel, The Well of Loneliness, was published to widespread controversy for its depiction of lesbian romance. While an obscenity trial in the United Kingdom led to an order that all copies of the novel be destroyed, a lengthy trial in the United States eventually allowed the book’s publication. Recognized as a pioneering figure in lesbian literature, Hall lived in London with Una Troubridge until her death at the age of sixty-three.

Reviews for The Well of Loneliness

[mahallett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

i didn't expect to like this as much as i did. stephen is an odd character but interesting. i felt for her. she doesn't understand the world very well. we are all lonely really. i don't think modern lesbians should be offended. perhaps they were offended because there wasn't enough sex to be "true".

[mirrordrum · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

the best thing i can say about 'well' is that it inspired Mary Renault, who read it while on vacation in France with her partner, to write "Middle Mist" (published in the US as "the friendly young ladies") as a retort.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of those seminal (no pun intended) novels which gets harder to read when the original shock value has long worn off. I'm sure Radclyffe Hall's open and emotional account of 'inverts', or lesbians, in Edwardian England and post-war Paris was controversial enough to warrant the furore raised at the time of publication - an obscenity trial which lead to the book being banned in the UK - but now Loneliness is just a weakly written historical account of prejudice and persecution - interesting, important but lacking in inspiration.Don't get me wrong, for the first half of the book, all I could think was 'Yes! I'm going to change my name to Stephen, this woman is telling my story!' - which I suppose is a good thing, 90 years on - but then the purple prose kicked in. Now, I have read every last one of Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel novels, which was like Enid Blyton writing for Mills and Boon, but at least her characters were interesting. Stephen - yes, of course giving the female protagonist a male name instantly turns her into a pseudo-man - suffers for her 'unnatural' love, but she is so dreadfully upper class, I couldn't bring myself to care. I was more concerned about her horse. And Mary is a drip. I did like the acid-tongued Brockett, though.I'm sorry, I know I should revere this novel far more than I do, and I'm sure reading this drivel gave a lot of confused and closeted women the strength to be themselves, but the writing is so stodgy. There's a lot going on - gay love affairs, World War One, 'Gay Paree' - but there is also much heavy prose, caricatures and general racism, which I don't normally complain about in nineteenth/early twentieth century texts, but there are a couple of cringe-inducing examples.'For sooner the world came to realise that fine brains very frequently went with inversion, the sooner it would have to withdraw its ban, and the sooner would cease this persecution.'

[misskittystryker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Well of Loneliness" was just one of those books I had to have, because it's iconic. Sad, certainly, in points, but also really takes one back to a time where being a lesbian was really an option only for the privileged.

[bhowell_35 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book when I was 25 and again when I turned fifty. It remains a classic and is achingly sad, a story of heartbreak and loneliness.

[blackrabbit89 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Boy, was this book a product of its time. The title is spot-on in describing the mood of this novel. The Well of Loneliness is a thinly veiled account of the author’s own life as a lesbian in the 1920s and earlier, and it was very depressing.Don’t get me wrong; I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, and I’m very glad to have read it and experienced it. But I struggled through it. It was draining.The main character, a lesbian named Stephen, grows up feeling very different from everyone around her, although she doesn’t have a name for this difference. She begins an affair with a married woman who abandons her, and eventually she falls in love with a woman she met during WWI. The entire book paints lesbians and gay men as social outcasts, sexual deviants, freaks of nature–which is how society viewed them at that time. Stephen is hyperaware of just how extremely heavy the burden of her “deviant sexuality” is. She is rejected by her mother and by others in her life, she struggles to find friends and to create a social life, and eventually she tricks her lover into ending their relationship with the hope that her lover will marry a man and thus be saved from the difficult life of a lesbian.This book was immediately banned in many places when it was published, and it almost ended Radclyffe Hall’s career. I think she is remarkably brave for having written it, and I think it does inspire sympathy and increase understanding of the burden that society placed on gay people back then. (One minor lesbian character committed suicide; another struggled with immense guilt because of religious oppression.)Although I would have loved to see Stephen take joy in her sexual orientation, that is perhaps not realistic for its time. Stephen did the best she could in an extremely oppressive society, even maintaining faith in God despite the way the world treated her.

[msnikki · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Starts slow, but the foundation needed to be set. Once it gets going the story hooks you. Stephen's turmoil is heartbreaking, but I'm not convinced it rings true. The ending is odd, but I still recommend it highly. The description of the Paris social scene is gripping, especially when juxtapsed with periods of religious and romantic passion.

[doc_illusion · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The book that wouldn't end. It's one redeeming virtue is that the last page is beautifully written.

[sheherazahde · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic about being a lesbian in the bad old days.

[anderlawlor · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this and Rubyfruit Jungle the same weekend. I was 14 and I'd bought them sleathily from the "feminist" bookstore on Chapel Street in New Haven. (I wish I could remember the name of that bookstore. The Golden Something.) And Rubyfruit Jungle seemed like the world that was possible but The Well of Loneliness was a world I could only dream about. I guess I'm due to re-read it. I re-read it as an undergraduate and thought clever queer-studies thoughts about it, but I've forgotten all that now and I just remember being a teenager dreaming about changing my name to Stephen and being British.

[sharonbt-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel moved me very much when I first read it, around the time this edition was published - 1968. I had heard of it for years, but finally was able to buy a copy. The plot has been summarised by many other reviewers and I find myself agreeing with a lot of the criticisms of it now - its negativity, Stephen Gordon as martyr, class snobbery and racism, etc - but I believe it should be appreciated as a work of its time. No, Radclyffe Hall was not a great writer, but she was a successful "middlebrow" novelist who had won a couple of literary awards and earned a respectable place among novelists of the twenties. I don't believe she realised quite what the publication of The Well would cost her - she may have hoped to cause a stir, but I doubt she'd have wanted the book banned. What gives the book its power - power to still affect us today? I find it hard to account for this, or the effect it had on me. The sympathetic portrait of Stephen - who would make an honourable, law-abiding, God-fearing and attractive English gentleman, except that she was born a woman - goes part of the way, so that her awful fate can tug at the heartstrings. The total rejection by her mother, the cowardly refusal to "explain" her to herself by her father and the disgraceful treatment of her by the bored, unhappily married Angela Crossby seem more unfair when contrasted with Stephen's good character. And the surrendering of Mary Llewellyn to Martin Hallam means that Stephen effectively loses a good friend, as well as her lover. In fact, you wonder what on earth will happen to Stephen in the future - will she ever love again? And will she ever write another novel?One of the most interesting characters in The Well is Valerie Seymour, supposedly modelled on American expat, Nathalie Clifford Barney, who held regular literary "salons" in Paris. Valerie is a sane and rational breath of fresh air in the novel, who cannot understand Stephen's decision to sacrifice her own happiness. "You were made for a martyr", she scolds her. But she does allow Stephen to "use" her - pretending they were having an affair - to drive Mary into Martin's arms. I guess if Radclyffe Hall had a major strength, it lay in her portrayal of characters. She seems to invent a character and really go to bat for them. This characterises other works, too - notably The Sixth Beatitude and the short story, "Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself". I haven't read Adam's Breed, but I've no doubt I'd find myself sympathising with its protagonist, too.In all, I can actually see myself re-reading The Well of Loneliness again some day.

[amerynth · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness" is one of those books that I can appreciate for its history, rather than its literary quality. One of the first books about lesbianism, it was banned and suppressed in both England and America for its frank portrayal of a woman who struggled with her sexuality all of her life. The novel follows the life of a woman named Stephen -- who was given her name by parents who expected a boy. Instead they had a girl who appreciated abilities that were considered masculine in that time-- athleticism, fencing and hunting. She grows into a young woman who struggles with accepting herself when those around her, including an unsympathetic mother, do not. That struggle continues even to the end of the book, which draws to a rather dissatisfying conclusion.As a literary work, this book isn't particularly appealing. Hall has a tendency to go on and on about events that don't really shed light on any of her characters. Many of them are very two-dimensional, particularly Anna, Stephen's mother. While I didn't really enjoy the book (and in fact struggled in finding the will to finish it,) I'm glad I read it because it illustrates so well the pain and heartache that come in a world without acceptance.

[lauralkeet · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Yes, it was trying to get her under, this world with its mighty self-satisfaction, with its smug rules of conduct, all made to be broken by those who strutted and preened themselves on being what they considered normal. They trod on the necks of those thousands of others who, for God knew what reason, were not made as they were ... And the vilest of them could point a finger of scorn at her, and be loudly applauded." (p. 256)Published in 1928, The Well of Loneliness dealt openly with the subject of homosexuality, at a time when it was far from well-understood, and never discussed, by "polite society." It is a searingly painful account of a young woman's coming of age and her search for love and acceptance. Her parents longed for a son, referred to her in utero as "Stephen," and then in fact baptised her as Stephen. She grew up "not like other girls," and with few friends in her community. Only a couple of people understood the situation: her father, who had read some of the research of the day, and a governess who was herself a lesbian. But they maintained their silence; Stephen's father did not even confide in her mother, and no one explained things to Stephen.Stephen began discovering her own sexuality as she approached adulthood, through relationships with a male friend and a married woman. Later, she became part of a circle of "like" friends, and was in a committed relationship with another woman. Yet her life was not a happy one. Her mannish appearance attracted a lot of attention and gossip, she could never be "out" in public, and her relationships would never be formally recognized in the church or in the courts. She became estranged from her mother, who could not accept Stephen as she was. This is not a happy story, but Radclyffe Hall so expertly draws the reader into Stephen's life, love, and anguish, that this book is difficult to put down. What struck me most profoundly in this novel is both how far we've come, and how far we haven't, in societal views toward gays and lesbians. On the one hand, today most people know someone who is gay, and gays themselves can find community. Some are also comfortable being open about their sexuality. None of this was possible in 1928. On the other hand, Radclyffe Hall vociferously argued that homosexuality was innate, not a choice, a subject some people still debate. And, gay and lesbian relationships are still not properly recognized in many states and countries, and in many religious denominations.Because of its controversial subject matter, The Well of Loneliness was banned in Britain for 20 years after its publication. I read it in honor of Banned Books Week, and I'm glad I did.

[echo2_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Her heart grew more grateful with every mile, for hers was above all a grateful nature. (250)

[ocgreg34 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Anna and Sir Phillip Gordon looked happily unpon the upcoming birth of their child, hoping against hope to have a boy, even going so far as to only pick out a boy's name. When the child arrives, Anna is dispirited when she gives birth to a girl. Sir Phillip makes the most of it, but still decides to give her the name they'd already chosen: Stephen. And so enters into the world one of the most astonishing creatures of literary fiction. Young Stephen knows that she's different from the other children, but her father, noticing her difference also, allows her to grow up her own way: riding horses like a young man, sometimes dressing like a young boy. From a young age to her lae thirties, we watch as Stephen discovers herself, longing to love and to fit into a society that will not accept her or others like her. She puts her feelings into words, becoming a successful author and does find love, but that love is put to the test when someone who can offer her beloved acceptance steps into the picture. An astonishing book for its time that was banned upon initial publication, openly discussing what was considered taboo with much candor and respect. The characters of Radclyffe Hall's novel deal with the same societal pressures and beliefs which are still prevalent today: same-sex marriage, societal roles of male and female, wanting to fight for one's country during a time of war even when that country doesn't want you because of who you are. A truly remarkbale novel.

[atreic · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are lots of reasons not to like 'the first lesbian novel'. The take home message of 'she knew her girlfriend would be better with a Real Man, who could marry her and give her babies, so she lied to make her leave her' is never going to win over all the audience. And it is of its time, with all the implicit racism and classism you'd expect.That out of the way, I adore this book. There is something about it that just sings true to me - what it says about love, and the beauty of the world, and how people cope with being different. A book that manages to capture how terribly cruel and awful the world can be to people, and yet also captures moments of pure joy, and about how the honourable person continues in the world we are in.

[afinpassing · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A mostly martyred and sadistic treatment of "inversion" circa 1928 Britain, which alternates between passionate cries for equality and recognition as natural on one hand and on the other abased self-denial and reaffirmation of "the perfect thing" that is heteronormative love, raising children, and a sense of belonging to society. In tone, too, it varies wildly from prosaic to embarrassingly romantic and pagan to brutally intense (the last chapter is, while sort of ridiculous ...more A mostly martyred and sadistic treatment of "inversion" circa 1928 Britain, which alternates between passionate cries for equality and recognition as natural on one hand and on the other abased self-denial and reaffirmation of "the perfect thing" that is heteronormative love, raising children, and a sense of belonging to society. In tone, too, it varies wildly from prosaic to embarrassingly romantic and pagan to brutally intense (the last chapter is, while sort of ridiculous in substance, unusually successful in this).An important landmark for lesbian literature and a fascinatingly grotesque exercise in self-perception, but not a very good novel at all. Following nearly forty years of a life from birth to final tragedy, Stephen Gordon is described sometimes in excruciating, pointless detail; at others, major events breeze past with little consideration. The supporting players are mostly stock figures, and perhaps read more so today than when it was published as all the gay and lesbian stereotypes have played out through decades of cultural output, but none have much to contribute besides a definite articulated viewpoint and position counter to our heroine, and are dropped and brought up again with no elegance. That is the major problem with all aspects of the story: everything is definitely articulated and inelegant, and the epic length makes it so tiresome weeks went by without wanting to take it up (then again, there were days of compulsive, delighted reading, too) -- and Hall relies on a number of recurring favored turns of phrase that grow increasingly stilted and oppressive.Where it isn't bland it is almost relentlessly bleak, but, as far as it goes, for that it makes a useful study in gay life and identity in the early part of the 20th century. One only wishes for more -- or at least more style where it does find its purpose.

[aarch235 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Awful, dull, self-indulgent. Couldn't finish it.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In short, Judy the Obscure - that is to say, Radclyffe Hall eloquently excruciatingly explicates the sorrows of Stephen Gordon, a gender dysphoric Edwardian woman, with an ultimate spin as inevitable and crushing a downer as what Thomas Hardy did for his sad and unlucky in love stone mason.

[emily.d · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fascinating book. When I started it I thought it was going to read as a fictional autobiography - and it sort of did, though it turned out in the end more like a five hundred page long character study. The last fifty or so pages were heartbreaking, and the tragic conclusion was inevitable, and beautiful in a sad sort of way. I started this book for my school English Literature project - as a book to compare with Tipping The Velvet. More than any other LGBT book I've read (though admittedly I'm only on about number twenty) Stephen's internal conflicts and struggles were perfectly transcribed and inspired an enormous amount of sympathy in me. More than I had thought it would do, it enabled me to get past how outdated this book is in its treatment of 'inversion'. As a product of the early twentieth century, Radclyffe Hall is over-apologetic about her characters' sexualities and reduces Brockett (the only gay male character in the book) to a meaningless stereotype that the book could really do without. Despite this, no one could read about Stephen watching Mary leave, or the deaths of Jamie and Barbara, and say that the book presents lesbianism as anything other than a natural and valid way of living a life. Having read it now, rather than just read about it, the obscenity trial and controversy that originally surrounded it seem barbaric. Even when people read it, it was actually condemned for its portrayal of homosexuality when it should have been able to open up people's minds to be more accepting.

[chris.wolak · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book for a graduate reading list that I put together on lesbian novels. It was a fascinating read, historically, but on an emotional level it s devastating. I've often thought about re-reading it, but need to wait for a few sunny days on the beach when I'm in a splendid mood.