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.
Hall c. 1930
Mabel Batten sang to John Singer Sargent as he painted her portrait, around 1897.
1951 cover of The Well of Loneliness
Vault of Mabel Batten and Radclyffe Hall in Highgate Cemetery
The Well of Loneliness is a lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall that was first published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver during the First World War, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as the typical sufferings of "inverts", with predictably debilitating effects. The novel portrays "inversion" as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence".
Cover of the first edition
Marie Antoinette's Temple of Love near the Petit Trianon, Versailles, where Stephen and Brockett visit
The Temple of Friendship at Natalie Barney's home at 20, Rue Jacob
Women of the Hackett Lowther Unit working on ambulances