The Forge

by Radclyffe Hall

Hilary Brent won't say he joined the army to avoid his new wife, but it did seem like a remarkable coincidence.

Perhaps it was karma then, that his war experience was quite dull in the end. Now he is mostly occupied by his herbaceous borders and in the Devonshire countryside, and managing his every growing collections of curious objects.

Meanwhile, his despairing wife Susan is losing her passion for art, and is wondering maybe, just maybe, would have been better off staying in London?

The Forge is a hilarious social comedy following the Brents and their ailing dog as they navigate the alien social world of the countryside. Perfect for fans of Alexander McCall-Smith and Jane Austen.

Praise for The Forge
‘It is such a delightful mixture of gravity and lightness that is the essence of The Forge’ - Evening Standard

Radclyffe Hall was born on the south coast of England to an abusive mother and a playboy father. After this unhappy childhood, she inherited their estate and from then on was free to travel and live as she chose. She fell in love and lived with an older woman before settling down with Una Troubridge, a married sculptor. Her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928) was banned in the U.K. until 1948, but is now hailed as a classic of lesbian literature. She wrote many other acclaimed novels, short story collections, and poetry collections.

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name John, rather than Marguerite.

In the drawing rooms of Edwardian society, Marguerite made a small name as a poet and librettist. In 1907, she met a middle-aged fashionable singer, Mrs. Mabel Batten, known as 'Ladye", who introduced her to influential people. Batten and Radclyffe Hall entered into a long-term relationship. But before Batten died in 1916, Radclyffe Hall, known in private as 'John', had taken up with the second love of her life, Una, Lady Troubridge, who gave up her own creative aspirations (she was the first English translator of the French novelist Colette) to manage the household which she shared with 'John' for 28 years. With Batten, Radclyffe Hall converted to Catholicism; in the company of Una, she pursued an interest in animals and spiritualism. In later life, Radclyffe Hall chased after a younger woman named Evguenia Souline, a White Russian refugee. She died from cancer of the colon in October 1943.
As Radclyffe Hall (no hyphen; prefixed neither by 'John' nor 'Marguerite'), she published a volume of stories, Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself (1934), which describes how British society utilised 'masculine' women during the First World War and then dropped them afterwards, and a total of seven novels. However, the novel on which Radclyffe Hall's reputation rests primarily is The Well of Loneliness (1928).
The novel was successfully prosecuted for obscenity when if first came out, and remained banned in Britain until 1948. Vilified as 'the bible of lesbianism' by fire-and-brimstone reactionaries. In the seventies, the halcyon days of radical feminism, it was hailed as the first portrayal of a 'butch' woman.