Your John

Book excerpt: This book represents the first publication of original writing by Radclyffe Hall, author of The Well of Loneliness, in over fifty years. Deciphered and edited by Hall scholar and biographer Joanne Glasgow, Your John is a selection of Hall's love letters to Evguenia Souline, a White Russian emigre with whom Hall fell completely and passionately in love in the summer of 1934. Written between this first meeting and the onset of Hall's last illness in 1942, these letters detail Hall's growing obsession, the pain to her life partner, Una Troubridge, of this betrayal, and the poignant hopelessness of a happy resolution for any of the three women. It was ultimately this relationship, Glasgow argues, that tragically precipitated the decline in Hall's creative work and in her health. The letters also provide important new information about her views on lesbianism, and take us well beyond the artistic limits she imposed on the characters in The Well. They shed light on her thinking about religion, politics, war, and the literary and artistic scene.