- Paperback: 432 pages
- Publisher: Virago Press Ltd; New edition edition (17 May 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1860495451
- ISBN-13: 978-1860495458
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
492,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #43 in Books > Biography > Gay & Lesbian > Lesbian
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Review
'Diana Souhami's biography is fascinating and thorough. In style, substance, insight and wit it is by far the best thing anyone has written on the fateful life of Radclyffe Hall' Jeanette Winterson, THE TIMES 'So candid, so vivid, so tragicomic...outrageously entertaining' Victoria Glendinning, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'a fascinating account of a woman whose...novel became a landmark in the history of freedom of expression.' OBSERVER 'Diana Souhami has given us a gripping biography and a marvellous piece of social history.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'Souhami's sympathetic but not uncritical biography treats its colourful, self-dramatising cast of eccentrics, toffs and spiritualists with a pleasing measure of irony.' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY
VICTORIA GLENDINNING, DAILY TELEGRAPH
'So candid, so vivid, so tragicomic...outrageously entertaining'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This must be the most fascinating, the most haunting and most entertaining biography I have ever read. Souhami is the perfect chronicler of the oddities and absurdities of these impossible characters; every page is a delight. I can't remember a book that has amused me more.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In this brilliant biography Diana Souhami re-creates the life and world of Radclyffe Hall. Writing about her subject with compassion, humour and wit, Diana Souhami treats Radclyffe Hall sympathetically, yet does not seek to lionise her; instead she delights in detailing the remarkable absurdities of her subject's life. Souhami's style is elegant and engaging: The Trials of Radclyffe Hall has me want to read all her other biographies.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I suppose I should be grateful to Diana Souhami, given that while writing this biography she forced the opening of important Government files on Radclyffe Hall that I have since been using myself: but I have misgivings about this book. It is, as far as I can judge, accurate in its core subject matter. However, the citations are so sloppily done and so very far from standard academic practice that it isn't always easy to tell what her sources are except for direct quotations. She also overlooks certain minor points, probably because of time restrictions on her research (for example, she claims that the Home Secretary persuaded Rudyard Kipling to offer evidence against "The Well of Loneliness": in reality, it seems to have been the other way around, but that is only made clear by papers in a very obscure private archive). The massive amount of effort that has obviously gone in on Radclyffe Hall herself is the redeeming feature: the bibliography is a most imposing list, and one that an impoverished PhD student like myself can only drool over enviously, comprising archives in places as diverse as Toronto, Texas and London. But it would have been better if they had been more tightly applied and more clearly marked in the text. It is also, on a purely aesthetic level, rather heavy going. This is hardly Souhami's fault; the bewildering variety of names, nicknames and changing nicknames would confuse the cleverest analyst; but the rather abrupt style, with its extensive use of simple sentences and occasional lack of clarification, doesn't help. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile biography of one of the twentieth century's bravest (albeit hardly one of its best) writers, and would be of great value to anyone interested in the literature, culture or history of the 1920s. But be careful if using it as a starting point for scholarly work.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
The Trials of Radclyffe Hall
I haven't read this book yet, but glancing through it I must say it looks interesting.
I needed the book for a college course I will be taking in March.
I needed the book for a college course I will be taking in March.
Published 4 months ago by Mrs. T. M. Hubbard
Frank Account of An Arrogant Bully
Radclyffe Hall was "one of England's great eccentrics", best known as being openly a pipe smoking lesbian. Read more
Published 5 months ago by William
Tragic
I think this biography is much more than Radclyffe Hall, a deeply flawed person (not because of her sexuality, I hasten to add), deserves. Read more
Published on 24 Nov 2009 by Fuficius Fango
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