Before the publication of her novel The Well of Loneliness in 1928, the writer Radclyffe Hall, a lesbian from an upper-class family in Bournemouth, warned her editor that the book would require a mammoth commitment from its publisher. “I have put my pen at the service of some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people in the world,” she announced portentously.
“So far as I know nothing of the kind has ever been attempted before in fiction.”
