{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"","title":"The Well of Loneliness: How to Make a Book Famous by Banning It","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/69304179d6bc23eda246da43/f627952b-333d-4ffc-b421-6537f6825994.jpg?height=200","description":"In 1928, Radclyffe Hall published The Well of Loneliness, a novel about a lesbian woman. It was not explicit — the most controversial line was 'and that night, they were not divided.' The Sunday Express demanded it be banned: 'I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel.' The Home Secretary agreed. The book was prosecuted for obscenity. At the trial, the judge refused to hear any witnesses in its defence — including Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, who had come to testify. The book was found obscene and ordered destroyed. The result? It became an international sensation. Published in France, America, and across Europe, it sold in hundreds of thousands. Every attempt to suppress it created more readers. It remained the most widely read lesbian novel in the world for decades. Radclyffe Hall — who wore men's clothes, used masculine pronouns with intimates, and called herself 'John' — became an unlikely celebrity. The prosecution had achieved the exact opposite of what it intended.","author_name":"Atween Studios"}