The Well of Loneliness

In 1928, there were three lesbian novels published in England: Viriginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, Compton Mackenzie’s Extraordinary Women, and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. Between them, each book offered then-revolutionary ideas about love, sexuality, and gender; but only one has been banned, welcomed praise, and garnered controversy for almost a century. Stephen Gordon has always been different. Firstly, she was born a girl against her parent’s wishes. Secondly, she is raised to be boyish—the son her father always wanted—much to her mother’s disdain. However, the most damning thing of all is Stephen’s love for other women, something society isn’t quite ready to accept. While Stephen lives a good life—that is, having wealth and opportunity by virtue of being born into an upper-class aristocratic family—it is far from an easy one. For Stephen, life is a frustrating existence where she does not know the meaning of herself or where she belongs in the world…that is until she meets Angela Crossby, and comes to know romantic love for the very first time. Autobiographical in nature, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness is an intensely emotional novel about what it means to be queer in the early twentieth century. Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book. With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.