The Well of
Loneliness

In the summer of 1928, the English novelist Radclyffe Hall warned her publisher that her next book would require an unusual degree of faith. She was not exaggerating. The Well of Loneliness was the first novel in English to depict a self-realized lesbian identity with full seriousness and without apology. Within weeks of its publication, it had become the center of a cultural firestorm that would engulf the British literary establishment and produce one of the most consequential obscenity trials of the twentieth century.

Stephen Gordon is born to wealthy English parents who had expected a son. Her father, recognizing early that his daughter is different, loves her with a protectiveness that borders on grief. Her mother recoils from the child with an antipathy she cannot explain.

As Stephen grows into adulthood, the nature of her difference becomes clear: she is what the sexologists of her era called a congenital invert — a masculine woman whose desires and sense of self are directed toward other women. She becomes a writer. She serves with courage as an ambulance driver during the First World War. She falls deeply in love. But the society she has fought for will not accept the life she wants to live.

Ovid Publishing Group's LGBTQ+ Library brings forgotten and overlooked works of queer literature back into print through new English translations and carefully annotated editions. Specializing in public domain works from the 18th through early 20th centuries, the collection recovers voices that were censored, prosecuted, published anonymously, or simply lost to time.

Each edition pairs faithful new translations with scholarly introductions that place these works in their historical and cultural context, ensuring that the pioneers of LGBTQ+ literature finally reach the modern readers they were written for.