Radclyffe Hall Talk

Speakers:
Shawna Lipton, Washington State University, Vancouver
Prof. Ann Martin, University of Saskatchewan

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall was the target of a highly publicized obscenity trial, which led to the book being banned in Britain in 1928. The publicity surrounding the novel made its strikingly stylish author a lesbian icon. This talk addresses the legacy of The Well in mainstream and LGBTQ visions of gender and sexuality and uses materials from the Neil Richards Collection of Sexual and Gender Diversity to showcase multiple editions and cover images of Radclyffe’s Hall’s most famous novel—and its subsequent influence on the lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. The role of Hall and The Well of Loneliness in marketing pre-Stonewall lesbian pulp fiction, and especially the complex relationship between “serious” literary fiction and mass-market paperbacks, will be explored through this interdisciplinary and transhistorical consideration of how the archives can be queered through lived experience.

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Everyone is welcome.

For more information please contact Professor Ann Martin

Sponsors
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Culture and Creativity, College of Arts & Science
University Library, University Archives and Special Collections
The Department of English, College of Arts & Science