Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing by Richard Dellamora (review)

306 CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE But in reading Brown and grasping his "gloss"of this play,the most important book to know, besides King Lear itself, is the Bible. Readers mayor may not agree with Brown'sinterpretations, and we cannot know the extent of Shakespeare's own spiritual concerns. Nevertheless, the Biblical references throughout this book do aptly fit both the actions and the language of the play. Strikingly, in view of the dominant reading of Shakespeare as a secular man, Brown reclaims Shakespeare for the lover ofliterature who is also a lover of God. Instead of the drama of despair that many see, instead of a bitter denunciation of the unfairness of life, through Brown's text King Lear becomes a cautionary tale about true sight and blindness, about living to gratify the flesh or giving oneself to righteousness. The tragedy of Lear becomes the comedy of Edgar. Readers and viewers can choose which path to follow. Deborah 1. Klein FaulknerUniversity Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing. By Richard Dellamora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. ISBN 978-0-8122-4346-8. Pp. xxii + 319. $34.95. The title of Richard Dellamora's study of Radclyffe Hall misleads the reader as the book is only marginally a biography. Many studies of writers' lives turn into critical biographies, but this study presents little literary criticism. It does present major dates and happenings in Hall's life, but most of the book goes somewhat afield in addressing her milieu, relatives, friends, and interests. Dellamora sees Hall'slifeas an experiment in living daringly and courageously while she worked to change the hostile environment she saw as threatening her and others with samesex desire, which she argued was congenital and God-given. Feeling that traditional biography limits the affective aspect of the subject's life, Dellamore seeks to draw Hall's feelings from the poetry and fiction, which he finds to contain much biographical and autobiographical material. He considers, as have biographers before him, many incomplete and unpublished pieces that have survived, such as an autobiographical essay in which Hall narrates the story of her unsatisfactory upbringing with an abusive mother and absent father and shows how she failed to develop essential connections with her roots in her dysfunctional family and home life, even though her parents were upper-middle-class and wellto -do. Hall'sfivebooks of poetry are especially revealing about her affectivelife.In the poetry she argues that ties with women are emotional and fleeting. That stance seems appropriate as Hall eventually betrayed each of her three long-term lovers. BOOK REVIEWS 307 Dellamora also makes clear that Hall owed much of her successto partnerships with these lovers-Mabel Batten, Una Troubridge, and Evguenia Souline-all of whom may be found in her work. Noting that Diana Souhami in The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (1998) posits that Hall was probably dyslexic,Dellamora argues that Batten and Troubridge served as collaborators, correcting Hall's drafts to make them presentable before submission for publication. Also much of the poetry reveals Hall's love for Batten; Sidonia Shore in A Saturday Life (1925) fictionalizes Troubridge; and Hall repeatedly wrote that Souline was the inspiration for the unfinished Emblem Hurlstone, The Sixth Beatitude (1936), and The Shoemaker of Merano (which Troubridge destroyed after Hall's death). Dellamora includes a long section on Spiritualism as after the death of Batten (whose sudden death from stroke she felt she had caused by her infidelity with Troubridge) Hall and Troubridge devoted considerable time, energy, and resources to contacting Batten'sspirit in the other world and seeking forgiveness from Batten and her acceptance of their relationship with each other. Dellamora explains beliefs and practices of Spiritualism, especially seances, as they were the major method of attempting to contact the dead practiced by Hall and Troubridge. Hall delivered a long lecture reporting on their sittings with the popular medium Mrs. Gladys Osborne Leonard. Dellamora discusses at length Hall's and Troubridges membership in the Society for Psychical Research and the suit for slander Hall prosecuted against St.George Lane Fox-Pitt because of his verbal opposition to her election to the SOciety's Council. Dellamora treats each of the novels...