Banned Books and Publishers' Ploys: The Well of Loneliness as Exemplar

Archival sources enable us to consider the myriad methods that UK publishers employed to avoid prosecution for obscenity. In turn, UK legal authorities took a collusive (and cosy) approach to obscenity, moving only to prosecute if the book in question generated publicity or achieved wide sales. The Well of Loneliness (1928) by Radclyffe Hall might have passed unseen, except by the intelligentsia, were it not for a fiery denunciation in a popular newspaper. Jonathan Cape, its publisher, equivocated over the novel's withdrawal. His equivocation led to a trial and a ban, and to his undertaking a last resort: publication of the novel in Paris. The case of The Well of Loneliness set the stage for the treatment of other canonical novels of the interwar period, particularly Ulysses (1922) and Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928).