Inside the censorship campaign against this 20th century lesbian novel

Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness was the target of a mass censorship campaign in the early 20th century.

First published in 1928, the semi-autobiographical novel follows a so-called “inverted” woman named Stephen, who enjoys the company of other women and dressing in men’s clothes. It is considered the first widely read novel about the lesbian experience written in English.

Shortly after it was published in the U.K., James Douglas used his position as editor of the Sunday Express to call for the book to be banned to “prevent the contamination and corruption of English fiction.”

The Well of Loneliness was accused of violating the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. While the novel did not contain explicit content, its exploration of queer themes was said to “deprave and corrupt” the minds of those who read it.

During the obscenity trial, judges refused to hear expert testimonies about the artistic merits of the book from authors like Virigina Woolf and E.M. Forster, claiming they were irrelevant. The book was ruled to be “obscene libel” and was ordered to be destroyed.

But the book’s legal challenges unfolded quite differently in the U.S. After the novel was accused of violating the 1873 Comstock Act, the publishers’ lawyer Morris Ernst successfully argued that lesbianism was not inherently obscene or illegal, resulting in the case being dismissed.

Hall would not live to see her novel back on shelves in the U.K. once the Obscene Publications Act was amended in 1959, but its legacy lives on as a seminal work of queer literature that is still read and analyzed today.