The literary contribution of Radclyffe Hall is often overshadowed by the notoriety of the obscenity trial of her The Well of Loneliness (1928), the first openly lesbian novel in English. In fact, however, before the appearance of that work she was the author of five volumes of poetry and four other novels, ranging from social comedies to spiritual quests, which sold well and won prestigious awards. The negative reaction to The Well of Loneliness led her to turn to religious novels. Her short stories, collected in Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (1934), reflect her interests in religion, spiritualism, and the psychological development of the individual.

Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe-Hall was born on 12 August 1880 at Sunny Lawn, West Cliffe, Bournemouth, Hampshire, to Radclyffe Radclyffe-Hall and Mary Jane Diehl Sager Radclyffe-Hall, who was originally from Philadelphia. Her paternal grandfather, a tuberculosis specialist who ran a sanatorium in Torquay, had established the family fortune that...