RADCLYFFE HALL
(Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall)
Hall’s novel was banned in England and America on obscenity grounds for the quoted sentence. The characters were both women and the veiled implication of possible sex between two women was then considered pornography per se. The New York Judge who found the publisher guilty said “the book tends to debauch public morals.” The guilty verdict was overturned on appeal. As a result of the “negative publicity” the book sold over 1 million copies in the author’s lifetime and was translated into 11 languages. Suppression had the effect of giving the book enormous publicity which is often true in censorship cases. If nothing else, people want to see what the society says that they should not read.
Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name John, rather than Marguerite.
