The Well of Loneliness by HALL, Radclyffe

Cape, 1928. 1st edition. Hardcover. Original black boards with gilt spine lettering, clean endpapers and pages, with just a few spots to the front text block, rough-cut fore-edge as issued, blue wash top. True first printing with 'whip' on page 50. The original cream jacket, lettered in black, is present, but in a worn state with considerable loss to the spine, tape marks and chips at the corners. A jacket is a rare accompaniment to the book, because there were only two small printings in Britain before its controversial subject-matter led the Government to press Cape to withdraw the book. The campaign against the book had been led by James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express, who notoriously said he would rather a young person drank a phial of prussic acid than read Hall's book. Cape then leased the rights to the Paris house, Pegasus Press, whose edition followed two months after and inevitably re-entered Britain. That led to the complete banning of the novel, which was not republished free from challenge until 1949. Hall's novel, featuring Stephen Gordon, a lesbian who identifies herself - as Hall did - as an 'invert', is a landmark work of gay fiction.