Lesbian novel was 'danger to nation' (UK Archives)

[emad]

Lesbian novel was 'danger to nation'

David Smith
Sunday January 2, 2005
The Observer

A lesbian novel was banned after official medical advice that it would encourage female homosexuality and lead to 'a social and national disaster'.
In 1928 Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, which got no more racy than 'she kissed her full on the lips like a lover', led to an obscenity trial which considered the implications of the national shortage of men and 'two women in bed making beasts of themselves'.

Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, his Chancellor, Winston Churchill, and Home Secretary Sir William Joynson-Hicks went to great lengths to suppress the book.

Hall, a flamboyant lesbian, wrote The Well of Loneliness to 'put my pen at the service of some of the most misunderstood people in the world'. She attended the trial in November 1928 dressed in a leather driving coat and Spanish riding hat. Sir Chartres Biron, the chief magistrate at Bow Street, ruled that the novel was an 'obscene libel' and all copies should be destroyed. Its publisher, Jonathan Cape, launched an appeal which proved abortive.

Documents show how Sir Archibald Bodkin, Director of Public Prosecutions, feared that the publisher would mobilise eminent writers to defend the book. He wrote to several doctors asking for a clinical analysis of what he called 'homo-sexualists'. In a letter to one of them, Sir Farquhar Buzzard, he explained: 'I want to be able to call some gentleman of undoubted knowledge, experience and position who could inform the court of the results to those unfortunate women (as I deem them) who have proclivities towards lesbianism, or those wicked women (as I deem them) who voluntarily indulge in these practices - results destructive morally, physically and even perhaps mentally.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1382051,00.html

[rodeodance]

1. obviously in Bush's America lesbianism is still a danger!!

[MSgt213]

2. Wow. I hope they burn that book because there would be a lot gays around

if they didn't.

[UTUSN]

3. Oh. Thought It Was Lynne CHEENEE's Book. n/t

[0007]

6. Sisters by Lynne Cheney - the second woman

[emad]

8. Thankx. Cheered up my Sunday...

[0007]

10. Did 'ya get warm and fuzzy when you read in the fifth excert

"In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the fire light" - LOL!!

Man, I still can't quit laughing...what the hell is a "cross-sitch" - Is this some kind of Hatha Yoga asanas?

....also I wonder if Dick Cheney reads any of Lynne's stories?

[emad]

11. Well, maybe fuzzy.....

Always thought Lynne's stories were ghosted....maybe Condi?

[cali]

4. I first read ''The Well Of Loneliness"

when I was thirteen. It was in parent's library, and I plucked it off the shelf. I remember being deeply touched by the story. It was an incredibly poignant account of a young woman trapped in a society that had a deep antipathy towards her. I haven't read it in a great many years, but this article makes me want to revisit it.

[slor]

5. Be careful!

You might go gay on us!

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Sir Farquhar Buzzard, Sir Archibald Bodkin

ah, those were the days - when public figures had proper silly names. Why don't we get home secretaries called "Sir William Joynson-Hicks" any more?

[emad]

9. The Independent's take on this:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=597260

[mr blur]

12. Well, I enjoyed it (n/t)