1929 Radclyffe Hall “The Well of Loneliness” Victory Edition
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GUEST:
This is a book that was given to me and my wife by my sister-in-law, who passed away five years ago due to breast cancer. About 20 years ago, she
purchased those books from an antique bookseller in Los Angeles. The book is by Radclyffe Hall, a British author, which originally was written in 1928. And it's the story of two ladies, it's a lesbian novel.
APPRAISER:
It's a landmark book in gay and lesbian modern literature of the 20th century.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
It was a sensation at the time, and still today it's read and discussed, it's an important part of the canon, we say, of gay and lesbian literature.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
It has a really interesting publishing history. The author, Radclyffe Hall, was already a famous novelist when she decided to write this book, and she took it to her British publisher...
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
And he thought that the subject matter probably would be controversial, but he decided he was gonna go ahead and publish it anyway, he brought it out in a very small limitation. It had a reasonably positive response, but there was one guy in particular, one newspaper publisher, who just really took a dislike to the book, who thought it was obscene, who mounted a really strong negative campaign, and really kind of demanded that it be declared obscene and be censored. And in the U.K., the publisher was brought to trial, the publisher was charged with obscenity, and the book went to trial. And the British court declared that it was obscene and that it was removed from circulation in the U.K. What do you think happened when American publishers heard that?
GUEST:
Of course.
APPRAISER:
There was a bidding war.
GUEST:
Bidding war, yeah.
APPRAISER:
For the publishing rights. So it came to America, where we have the First Amendment, freedom of the press, where it was less likely to be the subject of an obscenity trial, but nonetheless, because of the subject matter, because it's about lesbian relationships, that publisher too was charged with obscenity. It did go to trial. The U.S. courts did not declare it as obscene. They declared that it was in
fact fine literature, it was adult subject matter, but it was nothing that needed
to be removed from circulation. That was good news for the publisher,
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
the American publisher, which is a company called Covici Friede, and to celebrate the result of the trial, they produced this, what they call the victory edition. What you see before you is the 1929 edition
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
of "The Well of Loneliness."
APPRAISER:
So they took the book and made what we call a deluxe limited edition
version. It's in two volumes instead of one, it comes in a slip case,
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
which you have. A lot of times people don't actually have the slip case. It is signed by the author,
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
and it is in fact, a limited edition. And I'll show you the title page,
which has a portrait of the author.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
And she was sort of famous for her style, she wore her hair very short,
and often wore suits and ties. Here's the New York, the 1929 publication page,
the next page is the author's signature, and the very next page is the limitation page, and you have copy number 43 of the 225. And your slip case also has the number 43 handwritten on the...
GUEST:
It says on it, yes.
APPRAISER:
...on the spine. So we know that the slip case actually matches the two-volume set itself. One really interesting thing about this set is that it seems to defy a lot of the rules that we have about publishing.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
I always tell people that it's very important to collect the edition that's in the country of origin.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
So for an English author, you want the English edition, right? And that usually we want the very first edition that rolls off the press, not a later edition. So logic would tell you, you would want the U.K. edition
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
from 1928, not necessarily the U.S. edition from 1929.
GUEST:
'29, yes.
APPRAISER:
But in this instance, the U.K. edition is a collectible book, but the book itself is very plain, it has a very plain dust wrapper, and this is a much more deluxe edition. It has a beauty to it that the earlier one doesn't have it, and it's rarer. So of the two, this is actually the more desirable and more valuable edition. The 1928 U.K. one sells at auction for between $200 and $400.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
This one sells at auction for $1,000 to $1,500.
GUEST:
That's wonderful.
APPRAISER:
So do you have any idea how much your sister paid for the book?
GUEST:
Yes, I think she paid $700 to $800, yes. We may keep it, you know, as just a memory of her.
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