When Lady Anna gives birth to her only child, she and her husband Sir Phillip anticipate a son. When a baby girl is born, Sir Phillip decides to keep the name they had chosen for the child—Stephen. As she grows up, Stephen shows little romantic interest in men and eventually falls in love with Angela Crossby, an unhappily married neighbour. The brief intense affair exposes Stephen to social condemnation for her sexual preference. A swift falling-out with her mother follows, and Stephen builds a life for herself in post-war Paris—becoming a novelist and finding love. Still, the social and religious pressures Stephen faces from the world force her to make the hardest decision of her life.
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall is one of the earliest lesbian novels, and received mixed reviews upon its original publication, and once religious and conservative leaders spoke out against the book, an obscenity trial followed. While The Well of Loneliness was ordered destroyed in the UK, it was successfully published in the United States and France, and was reintroduced in the UK and other countries in 1949. To this day, The Well of Loneliness remains one of the most important and studied works in gay and lesbian literature.
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