The Well of Loneliness
- Artist/Author/Producer: Radclyffe Hall
- Confronting Bodies: New York Court
- Dates of action: 1929
- Location: New York City, New York, Great Britain
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- Description of the Art Work
- "The Well of Loneliness," a mawkish yet powerfully moving novel about a
lesbian's struggle for acceptance and self-respect.
- Description of incident
- The book was found obscene in Britain even though it had no explicit
descriptions of sex. Expert testimony on its literary worth, offered in
the English trial by Virginia Woolf and other major writers of the day,
was rejected by the court as irrelevant.
A New York Court in 1929, ruled "The Well of Loneliness" obscene even
though the judge acknowledged that the book was "a well written,
carefully constructed piece of fiction" with "no unclean words." It was
penalized because it drew a sympathetic portrait of homosexuality, and
"pleads for tolerance on the part of society."
- Results of incident
- The prosecutor in the case used the Hicklin Rule to demonstrate that some
passages were obscene and therefore under the Hicklin Rule the entire
work was obscene. The Hicklin Rule was overturned in 1934 in the case
United States vs. One Book Entitled Ulysses.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Censorship,J.Green, Facts on File pg.. 3-4
