Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of Aug. 12th
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It is the 224th day of the year, leaving 141 days remaining in 2022.
Hall told her stories in novels and in verse about the struggle for self-identity. She wrote about lesbian relationships before people accepted that such partnerships even exisited, never mind accepted.
Hall self-identified as a "congenital invert," a term used in the 19th Century to describe what today would be called transgender. Hall wore traditional male clothing and was lesbian. But she always has been referred to as she and her, never expressing a desire for other pronouns, and that is what every biographer has used.
Her early writings were poetry, and she published five volumes between 1906 and 1915. Her first novels were unremarkable, although The Unlit Lamp was the first to deal with a lesbian relationship. Her 1926, Adam's Breed, was about the life of a restauranteur, and it was successful and won several awards.
But her groundbreaking novel, The Well of Loneliness, told the story of the love between a young woman and her older, female companion. While it was not explicit, a judge in England declared its discussion of lesbians "an obscene libel" and ordered all copies destroyed.
Later, a judge in the United States rejected that contention, finding the mere discussion of homosexuality was not obscene.
Still, Hall's later novels mostly avoided the topic.
She died in 1943 in London.
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