A wonderful book, with very useful footnotes and background information.

What Souhami manages to do is to paint a picture that owns the negative without playing down the brave and even important side to Hall's life. For the students of history and sexual politics, the trials surrounding the Well of Loneliness make fascinating reading and we see them through this book in a totally different light than I've seen them before.

Great biography.

I recommend reading Diana Souhami's biography of the writer Marguerite "John" (Twonnie) Radclyffe Hall. The author's prose is lucid. The book contains documentation and photographs of this rather extraordinary "sexual invert," as Radclyffe Hall insisted upon labeling herself and others like her. Extraordinary in large part because of the hoopla and trial that unfolded around Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). Souhami's biography presents a full account of Radclyffe Hall's: troubled childhood; poetry and fiction publications; beloveds; animals and birds (cherished, but quickly abandoned when they did not "obey" her); law suits (she was perpetually willing and financially able to sue anyone at anytime); and writing and editing processes. This is an interesting biography of an interesting woman.

it seems quite obvious that stephen gordon, the heroine (or should i say hero?) of the book, would never have questioned the moral conventions and gender roles of her times, had she not been born to be what she was--in short, a male soul trapped inside a female body (though hall, true to her style, never just says so). for she totally identified herself with a (upper-class) society of so-called respectability, honor, refinement, etc., which constitutes a mentality not really, uh, let's say "progressive". while crying out against the outrage against and persecution of lesbians and gays, stephen remained disconcertingly vague in her attitude toward effeminate males (such as the character jonathan brockett), feeling much more at ease with and indeed seeking the acceptance of straight (and presumably manly) men. i'm not exactly saying that it's "reactionary" to long for the very "secure and happy" life of "the normal", but how she--and i wonder if also the author--repeatedly projected heterosexual marriage to be is way too idealized and dangerously so, not pausing for even one moment to reflect on what outrage and persecution that sort of marriage could also and did often turn out to be for perfectly "normal" women. one can't help feeling that she thought everything would've been just so fine, if only and only if she had been a man!

so, while trying not to be anachronistic in my judgment of the novel and the characters in it, i suggest that it be carefully read *in context*, historically and ideologically.

If the book has a single, major failing, it is that Hall dwells on reminding the reader as often as possible that Stephen, the protagonist, is "different"; indeed, the word "queer" turns up more times than some of the sensitive sorts may find tolerable. There is also more than sufficient melodrama, which will surely be a turn-off for some--the focus of the novel, rather than the execution, is its true strength.

Nevertheless, the sincerity behind every delivery, no matter how drawn-out, makes this book a worthy addition to any collection. Hall lived this woe--survived the bitterness, anxieties, and, of course, loneliness--that, above all, is what makes this novel outstanding, and a personal favorite of mine.