RADCLYFFE HALL

I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel The Sunday Express Born into an aristocratic family at the end of the Victorian age, Stephen Gordon is so named by parents who had longed for a boy. So begins a life of contradiction and isolation. Attracted to girls and women from an early age, Stephens masculine appearance is accentuated by her preference for mens clothing and unfeminine mannerisms. When her first, burgeoning affair is cut short by social scandal, she moves to London and becomes a writer. When war breaks out she volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western Front, and falls hopelessly in love with a comrade. The subject of considerable media attention and legal action since its first publication in 1928, The Well of Loneliness can be considered a semi-autobiographical treatment of the personal and familial struggles of the author set against the epoch-defining events of the Edwardian era and the First World War. It remains startlingly affecting today and its treatment of sexuality and gender issues continues to inspire study and debate.

'I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel' The Sunday Express Born into an aristocratic family at the end of the Victorian age, Stephen Gordon is so named by parents who had longed for a boy. So begins a life of contradiction and isolation. Attracted to girls and women from an early age, Stephen's masculine appearance is accentuated by her preference for men's clothing and unfeminine mannerisms. When her first, burgeoning affair is cut short by social scandal, she moves to London and becomes a writer. When war breaks out she volunteers as an ambulance driver on the Western Front, and falls hopelessly in love with a comrade. The subject of considerable media attention and legal action since its first publication in 1928, The Well of Loneliness can be considered a semi-autobiographical treatment of the personal and familial struggles of the author set against the epoch-defining events of the Edwardian era and the First World War. It remains startlingly affecting today and its treatment of sexuality and gender issues continues to inspire study and debate.

Esta novela constituyó, cuando se publicó por primera vez en 1924, un escándalo entre la sociedad inglesa biempensante, pues exponía un conflicto hasta entonces inédito en la literatura de su tiempo: el amor entre mujeres. En efecto, Radclyffe Hall, en esta primera novela, realizo un sobrebio trabajo, una filigrana de sutilidades y complejidades psicologicas. La novela cuenta la historia de un insolito triangulo amoroso entre una madre, su hija, y la posible a amante de esta.

Honor nos presenta a una decidida agente del Servicio Secreto, Cameron Roberts, y a la mujer que ha jurado proteger, Blair Powell, la hija del Presidente de los Estados Unidos. El deber de Cam es proteger la vida de Blair y lo único que la aparta de la autodestrucción por el insoportable peso de su tragedia personal. Sin embargo, no ha contado con el hecho de que la hermosa y obstinada primera hija hará todo lo que esté en sus manos para escapar de los ojos vigilantes de sus protectores, incluso seducir a la agente encargada. Inmersas en el peligro cada vez más intenso que se cierne sobre Blair, ambas mujeres luchan contra secretos y pasiones ocultas mientras se ven obligadas a afrontar su creciente atracción.Desde las oscuras sombras de los escabrosos bares de intercambios del Greenwich Village a las galerías de élite del Soho, cada una de ellas debe mantener el equilibrio entre el deber y el deseo, y, en última instancia, elegir entre el amor y el honor.

THE WELL OF LONELINESS brought about the most famous legal trial for obscenity in the history of British law Banned on publication in 1928, it then went on to become a classic bestseller Stephen Gordon (named by a father desperate for a son) is not like other girls: she hunts, she fences, she reads books, wears trousers and longs to cut her hair...

New to Penguin Modern Classics, the seminal work of gay literature that sparked an infamous legal trial for obscenity and went on to become a bestseller. The Well of Loneliness tells the story of tomboyish Stephen, who hunts, wears trousers and cuts her hair short - and who gradually comes to realise that she is attracted to women. Charting her romantic and professional adventures during the First World War and beyond, the novel provoked a furore on first publication in 1928 for its lesbian heroine and led to a notorious legal trial for obscenity. Hall herself, however, saw the book as a pioneer work and today it is recognised as a landmark work of gay fiction. This Penguin edition includes a new introduction by Maureen Duffy. "The archetypal lesbian novel". (Times Literary Supplement). "One of the first and most influential contributions of gay and lesbian literature". (New Statesman). Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880. After an unhappy childhood, she inherited her father's estate and from then on was free to travel and live as she chose. She fell in love and lived with an older woman before settling down with Una Troubridge, a married sculptor. Hall wrote many books but is best known for The Well of Loneliness, first published in 1928. She died in 1943 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery in London. Maureen Duffy was born in 1933 and educated at Kings College London. She became a full-time writer in the 1960s, and has since written numerous screenplays, poetry and novels. A lifelong campaigner for gay rights and animal rights, Duffy is also president of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society.

La autora traza una atractiva historia de personajes unidos por la traición, la valentía y el amor.