Our Three Selves: Life of Radclyffe Hall

London: Hamish Hamilton. Very Good/Very Good. 1985. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0241115396 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth with bright gilt titling on spine. No ownership inscription. xiv, 386 pages clean and tight. Our Three Selves is the first comprehensive biography of Radclyffe Hall, the writer whose lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness was banned as `obscene' in a sensational court case in 1928. Drawing on much unpublished material - diaries, letters, essays - as well as her poetry and novels, Michael Baker throws fresh light on this extraordinary woman's early life and her two major love affairs, with the singer Mabel Batten (Ladye) and with Una Troubridge, the wife of a distinguished Admiral. Ladye and Una formed with John, as Radclyffe Hall liked to be called, an uneasy menage a trois - until Ladye's death in 1916. Thereafter John and Una kept `in touch' with Ladye through a medium, and later, as a tribute to their `sacred' trio, Radclyffe Hall dedicated her novels to Our Three Selves. When, in the 1930s, John began a long affair with another woman, it was to Ladye's `spirit' that Una turned for guidance and consolation. Radclyffe Hall was an unlikely target for judicial prosecution. Wealthy, politically conservative, devout, and established as a successful novelist, she stoutly upheld the traditional values of hearth and home. Yet she believed she was born a homosexual and saw herself as a `freak', as a man trapped in a woman's body, dressing accordingly in a flamboyantly masculine style all her own. She grew up lonely, sensitive and insecure. Despite converting to Catholicism, she remained a lifelong spiritualist. Shy and unintellectual by nature, she nevertheless attracted frequent public controversy throughout a turbulent career. Although she found happiness with Ladye and Una, the unresolved conflicts in her personality drove her to acts of infidelity against both which caused pain and anguish. jacket design by Cherriwyn Magill. Photograph on the front of the jacket of Radclyffe Hall (`john') as a young woman: Photography Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. Photograph on the back of John in her Chinese silk smoking jacket: National Portrait Gallery Size: 8vo. .