The Well of Loneliness

In 1928, Jonathan Cape released Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness. The story follows Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family who suffers from sexual inversion at a young age. She falls in love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while working as an ambulance driver during WWI. Hall portrays social isolation and rejection as typical "invert" afflictions that mar their happiness together. Shortly after its publication, James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, launched a campaign against the book. A British court deemed it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women." The book withstood legal challenges in New York State and the Customs Court in the United States. The legal battles surrounding The Well of Loneliness raised the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture. For decades, it was the most well-known lesbian novel in English, and for many young people, it was the first source of information about lesbianism.