About the Book
Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 188. Chapters: The Well of Loneliness, Philosophical Fragments, Treasure Island, Jane Eyre, Federalist Papers, Wuthering Heights, The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow, Caballero: A Historical Novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Out of Africa, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., Lettres provinciales, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Deltora Quest (series), The Story of an African Farm, The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy, Deltora Quest (anime), Sense and Sensibility, Longarm (book series), The Wide, Wide World, Das Judenthum in der Musik, The Bell Jar, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Rowan of Rin (series), The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic, Flatland, Villette (novel), The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest, Zastrozzi, Gor, Shirley (novel), The Lost Fleet, Venus in the Cloister, MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, Nato.0+55+3d, The Defence of Duffer's Drift, Circle of Three, The Man from C.A.M.P., The Tripods, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Waldo (short story), Teen Power Inc., Story of O, This Book Is Not Good for You, Giant's Bread, The Turner Diaries, The Adventures of James Bond Junior 0031/2, The Bolitho novels, Kybalion, Ali and Nino: A Love Story, The Guardians (novel), The Name of this Book is Secret, Adam Bede, Mr. Midnight, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (novel), Rider, Reaper, Ask Ann Landers, Policeman Bluejay, The Expert at the Card Table, Moon Fate, Hawkeye Collins and Amy Adams, Pirates of the Caribbean: Legends of the Brethren Court. Excerpt: The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. 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 in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as having a debilitating effect on inverts. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence." The novel became the target of a campaign by James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, who wrote "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." Although its only sexual reference consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided," a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women." In the United States the book survived legal challenges in New York state and in Customs Court. Publicity over The Well's legal battles increased the visibility of lesbians in British and American culture. For decades it was the best-known lesbian novel in English, and often the first source of information about lesbianism that young people could find. Some readers have valued it, while others have criticized it for Stephen's expressions of self-hatred and seen it as inspiring shame. Its role in promoting images of lesbians as "mannish" or cross-dressed women has also been controversial. Some critics now argue that Stephen should be seen as transsexual. Although few critics rate The Well highly as a work of literature, its treatment of sexuality and gender continues to inspire study and debate. In 1926, Radclyffe Hall was at the height of her career. Her novel Adam's Breed, about the spiritual awakening of an Italian headwaiter, had become a bestseller; it would soon win the Prix
