Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall (born Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall on 12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born in Bournemouth, Hampshire (now Dorset) in 1880, to a wealthy philandering father and quarrelsome mother. Lonely while growing up (her parents separated when she was a baby and she was virtually ignored by her mother and stepfather), she was educated at King's College London, and then in Germany. Hall was a lesbian and described herself as a "congenital invert", a term taken from the writings of Havelock Ellis and other turn-of-the-century sexologists. Having reached adulthood without a vocation, she spent much of her twenties...