?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
RADCLYFFE HALL (1880-1943)
The Well of Loneliness.
8vo, publisher's gilt-lettered black cloth; unclipped dust jacket with 15s price, browned, head and foot of spine panel chipped, heavily reinforced on the verso edges and folds. London: Jonathan Cape, (1928).
unique copy of a milestone book in lesbian literature and censorship. First edition, second printing with "whips" on page 50. This copy has a full page photograph of the author, pasted to the front flyleaf, and a 2-page typed poem signed by Hall pasted on the recto and verso of the back flyleaf. Loosely laid in is a 21 line letter from Hall, to a reader in Golders Green (mailing envelope laid down to rear pastedown) agreeing to autograph his copy and thanking him "for telling me that the book appealed to you...but as you know my grateful country still calls it 'an obscene publication' and as such the English post is not supposed to carry it. However, although governments may not appreciate the efforts of an author to give their best and to tell the truth, I have had immense sympathy and support from the British public." Laid down to the rear panel verso of the dust jacket is an envelope containing many contemporary newspaper clippings including the original damning review in the Sunday Express calling it pornographic "moral poison" and reports of the trial, appeal, etc. Also enclosed is a 1-page holograph history of the book and its provenance by a former owner.
