Radclyffe Hall

Marguerite Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943), who published as Radclyffe Hall and in adult life was known to friends as John, was an English poet and author. She is best known for The Well of Loneliness (1928), a pioneering work of lesbian literature whose British obscenity trial made it one of the most famous banned books of the twentieth century.

Hall was born in Bournemouth in 1880. She attended King's College London and later studied in Germany.

In 1907 she met Mabel Batten, a well-known amateur singer of lieder and some years her senior, who encouraged her to write. In 1915 Hall fell in love with Batten's cousin, Una Troubridge, and after Batten's death in 1916 the two women set up home together. Their relationship lasted for the rest of Hall's life, though she became involved in affairs with other women over the years. From autumn 1924 Hall and Troubridge lived at 37 Holland Street in Kensington, and during the 1930s at Rye in East Sussex.

Hall died in London on 7 October 1943, aged 63, of colorectal cancer. She is buried in Highgate Cemetery in north London, in the Batten family vault, where Mabel Batten is also interred. In 1992 English Heritage placed a blue plaque at the Holland Street house.