Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall [Paperback]

In 1934, after 20 years of a mostly monogamous relationship with Una Troubridge, Radclyffe Hall, author of the notorious lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness, fell in love with someone else. Evguenia Souline, a poor, friendless, Russian exile living in Europe, had 30 years to Hall's 54. To Hall, Souline was the picture of a virgin maiden in distress. Hall's obsessive relationship with Souline, Joanne Glasgow argues in her introduction, precipitated the author's creative and physical decline. These letters to Souline, written between 1934 and 1942, the year Hall died, contain Hall's ideas about the origins of homosexuality, the obligations of marriage and passion, political opinions, and ideas about art. Perhaps most poignantly, they are records of the daily, sometimes hourly, fluctuations of a nervous lover's anxieties and desires. The Radclyffe Hall of these letters is a flawed, vulnerable, utterly human woman who passes through romantic obsession to avuncular concern for a young charge she met late in life. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Many assumptions have been made about the degree to which Radclyffe Hall's lesbian classic, The Well of Loneliness, may be autobiographical. Your John dismisses all such notions. This exhaustive collection of letters written between 1934 and 1942 to Evguenia Souline, a White Russian emigre with whom Hall fell deeply in love are detailed, intimate records of Hall's personal life and convictions (only one of Souline's letters survives). As Glasgow notes in her excellent introduction, the love affair between Hall and Souline started during Hall's relationship with Una, Lady Troubridge, which lasted from 1915 until Hall's death in 1943. Hall had a deep commitment and sense of obligation toward Lady Troubridge and never imagined living without her. But as the letters show, the degree of emotional stress in the daily lives of all three women as they tried to accommodate the situation was great. Hall comes across as at once infinitely romantic and oddly practical. She praised Souline constantly, questioned her loyalty and fussed endlessly over her well-being. However, these letters chronicle much more than Hall's obsessive love for Souline. Hall's views on homosexuality turn out to be far more advanced than any reading of The Well might suggest. Her knowledge of current events, her devotion to her writing and her emotional and fiscal generosity toward Souline combine to paint a portrait of a devoted, passionate writer with an unquenchable thirst for love. There is nothing romantic about this collection, however, as Hall's relationship with Souline seems to have been impossible from the beginning. If Hall's neurotic tone is sometimes grating, the collection is still a heart-wrenching record of how politics, money, and geography converged to undermine these women's dreams.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.