[Rarebooks] FS: One of 225 SIGNED copies of this Pioneer Lesbian Title, price reduced
Charles Agvent
charles at charlesagvent.com
Tue Aug 9 14:10:26 EDT 2016
Price reduced to $900 NET
HALL, Radclyffe. THE WELL OF LONELINESS. New York: Covici-Friede, 1929.
First Limited Edition. The Victory Edition consisting of two large
octavo volumes (6-1/4" x 9-3/4") bound in silver-stamped yellow cloth
and blue boards printed on Van Gelder handmade paper. Copy #176 of only
225 copies SIGNED by the author. A pioneering book dealing with
lesbianism. Light rubbing of the silver on the spine, as typical for
this title. About Fine in a Near Fine slipcase, uncommon in this condition.
THE WELL OF LONELINESS provided an open treatment of lesbianism at a
time when homosexuality could not be discussed in English books or in
the English press. In 1920, the House of Lords declined to amend the
criminal laws of England to include lesbians because the Lords would not
acknowledge that they even existed. Following its 1928 publication in
England, the book was ordered withdrawn from sale by the Secretary of
the Home Office. Early in 1929 in New York, Charles Sumner, Secretary of
the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, acting under a
warrant, raided the office of the publisher and removed 865 copies
remaining from the sixth edition, then raided Macy's(!) book department.
This edition contains a summary of the court proceedings by defense
attorney Morris Ernst and a one-paragraph Commentary by Havelock Ellis,
author of the (also) suppressed 1897 STUDIES IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEX,
who notes that "apart from its fine qualities as a novel by a writer of
accomplished art . . . it is the first English novel which presents, in
completely faithful and uncompromising form, one particular aspect of
sexual life as it exists among us today." Among the many who protested
the suppression of the novel were F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway,
Sherwood Anderson, George Bernard Shaw, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf,
Rudyard Kipling, and Mrs. Ralph Pulitzer. The book remained contraband
in England until 1959.
(#016951) $1,500.00
http://www.charlesagvent.com/shop/agvent/016951.html
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