Hall-Troubridge Teaching Guides

Unidentified compiler, Banning of The Well of Loneliness, scrapbook, 1928.

These six pages reflect Hall's scrapbooking of articles relating to The Well of Loneliness and its publication. They show the stark public divide in reception to Hall's depiction of same-sex desire and lesbian identity. However, they also reveal how the book simply became a lightning-rod for broader cultural anxieties and social divisions in the post-World War I period.

Rubinstein, Nash & Co., Scotland Yard and The Well of Loneliness, April 1929.

This excerpt from a typescript tracing the suppression of The Well of Loneliness in the UK summarizes Hall's challenges with the text's publication. Small edits run throughout the pages, such as the replacing of "England" with "Scotland Yard" and the deletion of "Miss" in front of Hall's name.

Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst, The People of the State of New York vs. Donald Friede and Covici-Friede, Inc., 1929.

Jonathan Cape sold the American publication rights to Pascal Covici and Donald Friede, who, in turn, enlisted Morris Ernst (general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union) to defend the book against obscenity charges in the US. The document shows the defendants' legal argument: that the book is culturally and artistically significant and that there are precedents against censorship of such books in American courts.

Radclyffe Hall, Letter to Havelock Ellis, June 4, 1928.

Though Havelock Ellis wrote the foreword to The Well of Loneliness and was an important figure in the Sexology field that Hall used extensively to categorize Stephen Gordon as an "invert," Ellis kept the book at arm's length when it went to trial, refusing to serve as a witness. Though it was ultimately a moot point, Hall was likewise unable to rise to the book's defense during the obscenity trial. Since the legal argument was that the book was sincere, Hall's testimony was not deemed necessary, as the book was testimony of the author's views in and of itself.

Furthermore, for Ellis, the campaign against The Well also was an effort by cultural conservatives to call into question the scientific merit of sexology, who labeled it, among other things, a quack science.

Radclyffe Hall, Letter to Mr. Murphy regarding The Well of Loneliness court case, undated.

Hall writes a letter here to preface documents and letters about the trial.

Pegasus Press, Statement concerning republication of The Well of Loneliness, 1928.

Cape privately leased the publication rights of the book to the Paris-based Pegasus Press, who took advantage of enhanced publicity of the book to sell it prior to the obscenity trial.

Isaac S. Heller, Letter to Morris L. Ernst of Greenbaum, Wolff & Ernst, June 6, 1929.

Writing to Ernst, Louisiana attorney Isaac Heller updates the defendants in New York about how he successfully defended the book against obscenity charges and prevented censorship of the book in New Orleans. In his argument, he clarifies that while the book's content might be "harmful" to some, it does not rise to the accusations of deliberate public ruin that would be necessary for the book to be labeled obscene under American law.

Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (London: L. Smithers and Co., 1899).

Arguably his best-known work, The Importance of Being Earnest and its premiere occupy a conflicting time period in Oscar Wilde's life. As was the case in many European and North American countries at that time, sodomy was illegal in the United Kingdom in 1895 when the play opened. Wilde, romantically and sexually involved with Lord Alfred Douglas, misguidedly sued Douglas's father for libel when he began accusing Wilde of engaging in same-sex relationships. When Wilde's private letters proved the accusations against him to be true, he was jailed for gross indecency, all of which took place as The Importance of Being Earnest played to sold-out houses.

Remembered today for his gifts as a wordsmith and playwright, Wilde also casts light on the draconian impact of sexual morality laws that wreaked havoc on countless people. Many Victorian and Edwardian queer Britons likely enjoyed rich private lives that they navigated with caution. However, public trials such as Wilde's offer archivists and historians some of our only direct written examples of unambiguous queer history.

David O. Selznick, Letter to George Cukor, February 8, 1939.

Academy Award-winning director George Cukor lived relatively openly as a gay man in the "Golden Era" of Hollywood. As Vice Laws still dictated "morals policing," many queer people were criminally charged for a range of activities, including soliciting sex, attending pornographic theatres, or being caught in sexual acts with people of the same assigned gender. Though Hollywood studio executives, aware that stars viewed as immoral could subject the studio to boycotts from influential religious groups, used a range of coded language to explain why certain queer stars were single (such as portraying Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter as "workaholics"), the threat of public scandal through legal transgression loomed. While Cukor was at the height of his career, he was once the subject of a vice charge. However, studio executives, using their extensive power and influence in Los Angeles County had the charges dropped and expunged from his record, a not-uncommon practice when it came to protecting the reputations of profitable directors and stars at that time.

This letter, a precursor to him being fired from directing Gone With The Wind, is part of significant speculation about why Cukor was dismissed. While many argue his sexuality played no part in his firing, others (such as author Gore Vidal) have insisted otherwise.

Unidentified photographer, Eve Adams's Tearoom, circa 1939.

Eve Adams's Tearoom, also known as Eve's Hangout, was a lesbian club in Greenwich Village from 1925 until 1926. Owned and operated by Polish-Jewish writer Eva Kotchever and her partner Ruth Norlander, the club became a popular spot for lesbians in New York City and radical thinkers of the time, including fellow immigrant Emma Goldman. A space specifically designed to cater to women, the tearoom featured a sign stating "Men are admitted, but not welcome." After a June 1926 police raid, Kotchever was convicted of obscenity for being in possession of lesbian literature and was later deported back to Europe. She lived in Paris until she was arrested by the Nazis in 1943 and murdered at Auschwitz the same year.

Unidentified photographer, Mae West and Billy Sunday. 1935.

Actress Mae West wrote several controversial plays, one of which was a 1927 script called The Drag that focused specifically on gay men. West, remembered as a gay icon, had many gay friends and advocated early for gay rights. She announced auditions specifically calling for gay men actors (who were forbidden by the actors' union to have speaking parts in plays). While critics were sour on the play, arguing that it capitalized on indecent subject matter, audiences flocked to its Connecticut premiere. In 1927, another of West's plays, Sex, landed her in jail for 10 days and saddled her with a $500 fine for indecency. Like The Drag, Sex spoke candidly about sexuality and both proved financially successful, despite editorial backlash against subject matter that was deemed unfit for public viewing. The incident gave West significant amounts of publicity, and she responded with characteristic wit that the time in jail and the fine had been well worth it.

Here is Mae West photographed with noted American evangelist Billy Sunday in 1935.

Unidentified photographer, The original Broadway cast of God of Vengeance by Scholem Asch, 1923.

Polish-Jewish author Scholem Asch's play, The God of Vengeance (1906), infamously featured a lesbian kiss. After years of performances in Yiddish theatres in Europe and New York, the play premiered on Broadway in 1923 where, after a short run, the entire cast was arrested on obscenity charges. Like Hall's The Well of Loneliness, Asch's play received both ire and praise from a polarized public. Prominent Jews denounced the play, particularly for associations between Jewish immigrants and sex work, and the belief that the play would further expose assimilating Jewish immigrants in the US to antisemitism. Similarly, literary reviewers called into question the quality of the writing. Harry Weinberger, the play's producer and a lawyer, successfully overturned the obscenity convictions with the New York State Supreme Court on merit of "free speech." However, even usual advocates of free speech, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, offered only tangential support. This artifact represents the intricate complexities of not only questions of obscenity, but also the distinction between defending controversial literature based on freedom of speech versus the quality of the writing itself.

Here we see the original Broadway cast of The God of Vengeance.

Dorothy Bussy, Three letters to Mary Hutchinson, 1949–1950.

A classmate of Eleanor Roosevelt's at the London Allenswood Academy, the bisexual author Dorothy Bussy based much of her 1949 novel Olivia on her relationship with Marie Souvestre. Souvestre, the openly lesbian headmistress of the school, sought to cultivate independent minds for young women, and Roosevelt would keep a photograph of her beloved school principal on her desk for much of her adult life. In this letter, bisexual author Mary Hutchinson writes to Dorothy Bussy. Though Olivia was published years after The Well of Loneliness, the text found itself still enveloped in scandal and controversy upon its release by Hogarth Press (Leonard and Virginia Woolf's printing house).

Souvenir Novelty Co., publisher, State Mental Hospital, Provo, Utah, picture postcard, circa 1903–1927.

Until the late 20th century, LGBTQIA+ identities were frequently classified as mental illnesses and disabilities, with some aspects of transgender identity still codified as such today. A 1919 mental hospital registrar from Utah showed a range of behaviors related to sex and sexuality that were cause for institutionalization. Medicine, particularly in the early 20th century, sought to strictly regulate gender. People could be institutionalized for being queer and subjected to inhumane treatments as part of involuntary commitment. The lobotomy became synonymous with gender regulation in American mental health practices until fears of the Cold War and the possibility of "mind control" shifted American public opinions about this practice. However, mental hospitals, doctor's offices, and psychiatrists were frequent and brutal sites of LGBTQIA+ regulation and punishment, a theme that appears regularly in film and literature.

Lillian Hellman, The Children's Hour, cover (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1934).

Hellman emerged as one of the most gifted play and screenwriters of the mid-twentieth century. Outspokenly leftist in her views, Hellman found herself blacklisted in the 1950s at the height of Cold War paranoia and the threatening presence of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Citing the Fifth Amendment, Hellman refused to cooperate with HUAC questioning, which severely impacted her ability to work in Hollywood for some time.

Her 1934 play, The Children's Hour, focuses on the two principals of an all-girls school whose lives are thrown into chaos after a vindictive student begins a rumor that they're having a lesbian affair. By 1961 when the film became a major motion picture, the hints of Cold War politics are evident, with mere gossip and hearsay proving powerful enough to completely destroy the lives and reputations of others.

Motion Picture Association of America, Letter to Jack L. Warner, October 5, 1965.

Openly gay playwright Edward Albee's most famous play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, faced threats when first staged in 1962 of a canceled production over what censorship laws deemed "indecent." The play, which features explicit language, frank conversations about sexuality, and veiled allusions to abortion, faced significant edits prior to being made into the 1966 motion picture. While the play did not feature direct queer content, Albee had produced other plays with unambiguously sexual content, including the 1958 The Zoo Story.

Unidentified photographer, A Streetcar Named Desire, film still, 1951.

Like Albee, the openly gay playwright Tennessee Williams saw his work undergo significant revisions under the Production Code when his play, A Streetcar Named Desire, was adapted to film in 1951. The play, which featured unambiguous queer content, underwent edits that changed Blanche's dead husband from a closeted gay man to an ambiguously "weak" one. Furthermore, the film's director, Elia Kazan, gave evidence to the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. Himself a former member of the New York Communist Party, Kazan infamously gave names to HUAC, which, in turn severely damaged the careers of suspected Hollywood communists. Among those whose career was severely damaged was Kim Hunter, who starred as Stella in both the Broadway and film productions of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Christa Winsloe and Cecile Antoine, correspondence to Jenny Bradley from or about Christa Winsloe, 1939–1945.

A 1931 German film adaptation of Winsloe's play of the same name, Women in Uniform, was notable for featuring unambiguous lesbian content in Weimar Germany. This time period in German history became synonymous with greater experimentation with film and with queer themes becoming increasingly visible in a more tolerant inter-war Berlin-based culture. The film, as with other films of the time period that engaged in experimental stylistic choices and took up themes around gender and sexuality, was eventually banned by the Nazis later in the 1930s and labeled "Degenerate art."

Edward Gorey, cover design for Hadrian's Memoirs by Marguerite Yourcenar, undated.

Queer artist Edward Gorey illustrates the 1957 translation into English of Marguerite Yourcenar's Mémoires d'Hadrien. Living most of her adult life with her partner Grace Frick, Yourcenar proved to be a prolifically gifted writer. Winning many awards (including the prestigious Erasmus Prize), Yourcenar is remembered today both for her critically-lauded collection of writings, and her role as the first woman elected to the French Academy, the body of officials who govern all matters related to the French language.

Along with Colette and Marcel Proust, Yourcenar is remembered as one of France's most influential queer authors.

Radclyffe Hall, Adam's Breed (London: Jonathan Cape, 1933), inscribed and signed by Hall, 1936.

Hall signs this copy of Adam's Breed using the intimate name "John." Adam's Breed (1926), about the psychological impact of the First World War on those who survived it, became a critically-acclaimed and award-winning bestseller. It was the success of this text and the general agreement that the text was a well-written piece of fiction that gave Hall the motivation to pursue writing The Well of Loneliness. The text also exposes some of the literary questions surrounding form and content that proved challenging for authors of her time. The impact of World War One on literature was profound, shifting style and subject matter away from upper-class Victorian plots, characters, and plot structures towards more experimental and daring texts.

Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee, interviewers, Interview with Gore Vidal, sound recording, February 28, 1977.

Openly bisexual, the intellectual and social comentator Gore Vidal is recorded here with Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee discussing the queer histories of the Beatnik poets.

Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers, Speaking at The Poetry Center, YMHA, New York, sound recording, May 8, 1954.

Here Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams discuss literature and writing in an interview. Both queer and both Southern, the two authors achieved significant critical acclaim for their work and are today regarded as two of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century.

Robert P. Mills, Two letters regarding a theatrical adaptation of Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, May 1962.

Here, Baldwin bristles over suggestions that he remove queer themes and other culturally "sensitive" topics from a theatrical adaptation of his 1956 novel Giovanni's Room. While the letter does present Baldwin as uncompromising in his defense of his artistic vision, doing so came with serious potential consequences for his career and livelihood. While now regarded as one of the most significant Black authors in American history, his reputation with even more socially liberal literary and theatre audiences was not as insulated as one might think. In addition to potential homophobia, racism doubtlessly compounded Baldwin's efforts to take the same kinds of risks that White, queer authors might be afforded.

Alice Walker, Five Poems (Detroit: Broadside Press, 1972).

Alice Walker became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple. Centered on relationships between Black women (including romantic and sexual ones), the text is held up as a watershed book in queer-of-color literature. However, the book was released to much controversy from social conservatives in Reagan-era America who objected to it on the grounds of same-sex content.

Now considered a staple of American literature, the book continues to be targeted for removal from classrooms and libraries on similar arguments against what challengers argue is sexually explicit content.

Here are five short poems published in 1972 in purple ink. Like The Color Purple, these poems center the experiences of queer Black women in a homophobic, racist, and sexist culture. However, unlike Hall who appeals for sympathy for queer characters, Walker emphasizes survival, strength, and revolutionary potential in her narratives.

Edward Williamson, "Willa Cather's Latest Book Is Another Triumph," September 23, 1923.

Here we see a 1923 review for Willa Cather's A Lost Lady. Regarded as one of the finest authors of her generation, Cather is at least partially credited with moving the intellectual setting of American literature from New England to West of the Mississippi River. She is regarded in the present as one of the first "great" women authors in American history, although she herself bristled at categorizations of "women's writing." In addition to her writing, she was an essayist and critic of new forms of writing, expressing both admiration and disdain for many popular authors of her time. Later, male authors who took up the midwest as a setting critiqued her work as old fashioned and apolitical. However, her books have enduring legacy for their sense of artistry and strong narrative descriptions of setting and characterization.

Unidentified photographer, James Joyce with Sylvia Beach in her bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, in Paris, 1922.

James Joyce's experiences publishing Ulysses would provide significant footwork for Radclyffe Hall during the author's own brushes with obscenity and publishing in American markets. While earlier collections note the significant contributions Beach made to publishing Ulysses at great personal expense, this photograph of Sylvia Beach and Joyce also brings into question the merit of a text.

Ulysses, with a section of the text featuring metaphorical masturbation, was banned from distribution in the US in 1921 under the Comstock Laws.

Eve Arnold, photographer, Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses, undated.

Actress Marilyn Monroe is photographed here by Eve Arnold reading Ulysses in 1954. Monroe has long been regarded as a "gay icon," and recent biographical scholarship suggests Monroe was queer and had meaningful romantic and sexual relationships with women.

James Joyce, Ulysses, cover of final corrected page proofs signed by Sylvia Beach and James Joyce, 1922.

In addition to her publication of Ulysses, Beach's Paris bookstore, "Shakespeare and Co.," served as a vital location for literary history, populated with some of the most famous authors of the day, such as Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Janet Flanner, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, The Little Review (Chicago: M.C. Anderson, October 1917).

In America, lesbian publishers Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap undertook the task of printing excerpts from Ulysses, starting in 1920. The Little Review became a proverbial "who's who" to some of the greatest authors of the early 20th century, including several openly queer writers who wrote unambiguously about same-sex attraction. Ezra Pound began mailing the pair excerpts from Ulysses, which they published until the Post Office burned issues of their magazine containing the text and tried the pair for obscenity. While technically focused on Joyce, the trial also exposed greater cultural anxieties about other works of literature the magazine had published, including poems and love stories by queer authors.

Random House, "How to enjoy James Joyce's great novel Ulysses," advertisement, 1934.

Here we see a 1934 Random House advertisement for "How to Enjoy Ulysses." This artifact shows the rapid evolution of the text from a challenged book to its integration in English-language literature as an experimental work of great importance.