Radclyffe Hall - Biography

Radclyffe Hall (1880 - 1943) was an author and poet from England. She was awarded the Gold Medal of the Eichelbergher Humane Award. Radclyffe Hall was a member of the Council of the Society for Psychical Research, the PEN club, and the Zoological Society. Radclyffe Hall is best known for her novel The Well of Loneliness. This novel discusses female sexual inversion and demonstrates clear influences from Havelock Ellis. Besides The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall's other novels include The Forge, The Unlit Lamp, A Saturday Life, Adam's Breed, The Master of the House, Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself and The Sixth Beatitude. Radclyffe Hall also composed over ten volumes of poetry. Radclyffe Hall was awarded the Prix Femina and the James Tait Black Prize. In 1999, the Publishing Triangle ranked Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness as seventh on its top 100 lesbian and gay novels. The Pink Paper lists Radlyffe Hall as sixteenth on their list of top five-hundred lesbian and gay heroes.

On August 12, 1880, Radclyffe Hall was born. She was originally christened Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall. For Radclyffe Hall’s early collections of poetry, she would use her entire to name. However, she would shorten her name to M. Radclyffe Hall for her second novel The Forge.

Radclyffe Hall was born in Bournemouth, Hampshire. Her mother was belligerent, and her father was lecherous and unfaithful. The dynamics of this relationship caused its destruction when Radclyffe Hall was an infant. Her mother remarried, but neither her mother nor her mother’s husband had any interest in Radclyffe Hall.

In accordance with her family’s wealth and station, Radclyffe Hall received a fine education. She was first educated at King’s College London. Later, she traveled to Germany to further her studies. Throughout her youth she lacked a vocation but she spent her time chasing women and looking for love.

Radclyffe Hall is remembered as being a lesbian. However, this was not the way in which she would identify. She preferred the term congenital invert. Many have viewed the main character in The Well of Loneliness as a proxy figure for Radclyffe Hall herself. Both Radclyffe Hall and her character Steven faced the loneliness and the early knowledge of being different in some innate way. Both realized their difference was rooted in their erotic and romantic interests. The pursuit of female lovers ended when they would leave for marriage.

While in Germany, Radclyffe Hall started a relationship with Mabel “Ladye” Batten in 1907. Batten had gained some fame by singing lieder. Batten was decades older than the youthful Hall, and Batten also had established a family which included children and grandchildren. The couple moved in together after Batten’s husband died. Batten began calling Hall “John.”

Eight years after Radclyffe Hall began her relationship with Ladye Batten, Hall became infatuated with Una Troubridge. Troubridge was Batten’s cousin. Troubridge, who was a sculptor, had married Vice-Admiral Ernest Troubridge before she had met Radclyffe Hall. Una Troubridge was also the mother of a young girl.

In 1916, Batten died, and in 1917, Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall began to live together in London. This relationship would survive for the rest of Radclyffe Hall’s life; however, it was often troubled when Radclyffe Hall began to see other women behind Troubridge’s back. Notably in 1934, Evguenia Souline entered Radclyffe Hall’s life. Troubridge permitted this affair but it caused her much pain.

In her first novel The Unlit Lamp, Radclyffe Hall relates the story of Joan Ogden who wants to establish a household with Elizabeth, a friend. Joan Ogden also desires to study medicine and become a physician. Ogden’s plans were thwarted by an overly controlling mother. The novel was particularly dark and therefore difficult to sell.

Radclyffe Hall’s next novel The Forge was lighter fare. She explored social comedy—a genre she would return to in her 1925 novel A Saturday Life. The following year Hall would publish a more spiritual novel called Adam’s Breed. This more meditative novel revolved around a waiter who rejected his career and food in order to move to the wilderness to live as a hermit. Many find the ways in which Hall addresses spirituality to be comparable to those in Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. The Well of Loneliness has become the work most associated with Radclyffe Hall. This novel was published in 1928. In other works, she had alluded to same sex relationships such as The Unlit Lamp in which the character longs to have a Boston Marriage. However, in The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall addresses same sex desire and same sex relationships in an open and explicit way. This novel has become a corner stone of Lesbian literature. Yet the main character in this novel (just as Radclyffe Hall herself) would not have used the term lesbian to identitify herself. She preferred Havelock Ellis’s term sexual invert. This novel made the case that sexual inversion was a natural occurrence. It further argues that inverts are lonely and tortured creatures who may be capable of brief moments of happiness. Ultimately, according to Radclyffe Hall, sexual inverts should be pitied and tolerated.

Although the novel depicted the real lives of inverts in the early part of the twentieth century, its discussion of sexual acts was quite tame. The British Government declared the novel obscene and destroyed all copies of the book. While the British government was pursuing its obscenity case against The Well of Loneliness, an anonymous defender wrote a poem called The Sink of Solitude. In this poem, the author ridiculed the politicians who had worked so diligently and rabidly to efface Radclyffe Hall’s work. However, the anonymous poet also lampooned Radclyffe Hall, depicting her (in an illustration) as Jesus Christ during his crucifixion. Hall considered this image so sacrilegious that she could not directly address it. The government of the United States of America was more enlightened and allowed The Well of Loneliness to be published.

After The Sink of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall felt embarrassed and scandalized. In her next novel The Master of the House, Radclyffe Hall returned to spiritual themes. At her request, this novel was published without a blurb on its cover. Many anticipated that this novel would also deal with the subject of sexual inversion. This propelled advanced sales and the Observer noted that this was a best selling book when it appeared. However, it received abysmal reviews and its sales quickly fell off. Americans were again more receptive to Radclyffe Hall’s work. Unfortunately, the American publishing house’s creditor seized the press run of the book and by the time Houghton Mifflin obtained the rights interest in the book had flat lined.

Radclyffe Hall’s reputation has remained prominent throughout the twentieth century, especially in the gay and lesbian community. She is often lovingly remembered as opening the conversation about sexuality to an audience beyond those indoctrinated in psychoanalysis. However, sometimes this remembrance is done with tongue in cheek. One such playful remembrance was written by Gerald Berners. Berners, the 14th Lord Berners, was a British composer and a man of leisure. Berners wrote a novel rooted in his autobiography that he called The Girls of Radcliff Hall. In this novel, Berners tells the story of his life in boarding school—however, he has described himself and his friends as young lesbians.

In the 1930s, Radclyffe Hall and Troubridge moved to a small community called Rye located in East Sussex. Many writers including E. F. Benson had made Rye their home. In 1943, Radclyffe Hall passed away. Radclyffe Hall was only sixty-three when colon cancer overcame her. Her body was entered at Highgate Cemetery in London.