Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John

Radclyffe Hall was a legend in her own lifetime and her fame has never faded. She was also a lesbian, which became part of that legend. Christened Marguerite, a shy insecure child with golden curls and Victorian muslin dresses, she became, at a time when men alone wore the trousers, a flamboyant character who smoked small green cigars, cross-dressed in Chinese silk smoking jackets, and called herself John. In 1928, when she was forty-eight, her fifth novel, The Well of Loneliness, was banned for obscenity, despite protests from leading literary and political figures. The trial turned the book into a notorious bestseller and brought the author literary fame.First a serious poet and novelist, then a notorious cause celebre, Radclyffe Hall was also a suffragist, a sometime feminist, a member of the Natalie Barney-Djuna Barnes Paris circle, and a Catholic convert who believed in spiritualism. Though she was a passionate believer in sexual loyalty, her blazing acts of infidelity lead her to infamous and tormented triangular relationships. Sally Cline uses entirely new material to explore, for the first time, the connections between Radclyffe Hall's writings, her life, and her milieu, meticulously analyzing the effects on a writer of her readiness to become a martyr to a cause and creating a major biography that is both a signal contribution to women's studies and a marvelous read.