The Well of Loneliness ***** the Unlit Lamp

This volume contains the first novel; as well as the most famous novel, by author Marguerite Radclyffe Hall.Hall's first novel, The Unlit Lamp, is the story of Joan Ogden, a young girl who dreams of setting up a flat in London with her friend Elizabeth (a so-called Boston marriage) and studying to become a doctor, but feels trapped by her manipulative mother's emotional dependence on her.The other novel in this volume is Hall's best known work, The Well of Loneliness, the only one of her eight novels to have overt lesbian themes. Published in 1928, was the subject of an obscenity trial and forbidden at the time in England. It deals with the life of Stephen Gordon, a masculine lesbian who, like Hall herself, identifies as an invert. Although Gordon's attitude toward her own sexuality is anguished, the novel presents lesbianism as natural and makes a plea for greater tolerance.