[Rarebooks] FS: A pioneering book dealing with lesbianism

[Charles Agvent]

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 #34 of only 
225 copies SIGNED by the author. A pioneering book dealing with 
lesbianism. Virtually no rubbing of the silver on the spine, somewhat 
unusual for this title, but some small, light spotting to the spine of 
one volume. About Fine in a Near Fine slipcase with a partial split at 
the top edge, 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England, the book was ordered withdrawn from sale by the Secretary of 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.
  (#019218)        $1,250.00

https://www.charlesagvent.com/shop/agvent/019218.html

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