Radclyffe Hall - novel - 1928 - pp. 75, 205

An iconic novel within the canon of LGBT literature, The Well of Loneliness focuses on Stephen Gordon, a wealthy English “invert”--a now archaic term for homosexual individuals--and her struggles to attain happiness amid the shunning and isolation brought on by social norms of gender and sexuality. She and a woman named Mary Llewellyn fall in love after meeting as ambulance drivers in World War I.

Stephen is close with her father, who dies in an accident, but not with her mother, who is uncomfortable with Stephen’s unfeminine demeanor. Stephen identifies herself as an invert after reading a Krafft-Ebing book (likely Psychopathia Sexualis), which she stumbles across in her late father’s study.

The book is considered to be largely autobiographical; it has been read as both a lesbian and a trans narrative. It met with controversy upon publication, but prominent literary figures including Leonard Woolf, E.M. Forster, and T.S. Eliot voiced objections to moves to censor it. It went to court and was deemed obscene and “calculated to deprave and corrupt minds open to its immoral influences."

Key elements: absent father, art, Europe, father figures, homosexuality, infidelity, lesbian