with uproar, leading to the book being banned under the Obscene Publications Act . This was because Hall had chosen to write from the perspective of a lesbian protagonist, Stephen. Stephen is assigned female at birth but given a traditionally masculine name due to their parents’ desire for a male child; this begins a life of identity conflict. The depiction of Stephen’s complicated relationship with their sexuality and gender speaks to Hall’s lived experience with gender dysphoria. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says that Hall believed that they were “a man trapped in a woman’s body”. Like the young Stephen, who likes to be called Nelson, Hall adopted a male pseudonym to write under, Radclyffe. A portrait of Hall painted in 1918bears a striking resemblance to Stephen in their later years, which suggests that what makes The Well of Loneliness so heartrending is that the emotional anguish comes from the heart of the author. Hall’s experience as someone who did not identify as the gender assigned to them at birth, is such an important narrative to read and understand – and to have been writing this story as early as 1928 marks out Hall as a revolutionary. Continue reading From The Well of Loneliness to Exciting Times: LGBTQ+ Narratives, Ninety Years Apart