- A hero who's achievements and/or qualities relate to the LGBT community
- A hero who is also lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT)
- Both of the above
Most lists of LGBT heroes tend to be US-based or based on the first category. The list of UK heroes who are also LGBT normally just consists of Alan Turing. I want to expand that list as much as i can, continuing with...
Marguerite Radclyffe Hall (1880 - 1943)
Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the novel The Well of Loneliness (a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature).
She was born in Bournemouth, Dorset, the daughter of wealthy parents. In 1907 she met Mabel Batten. They fell in love (despite the 24 year age difference) and moved in together. Batten died in 1916. Hall then fell in love with Batten's cousin Una Troubridge and they stayed together until Hall's death in 1943.
She had her first poetry published in 1894 (at the age of 14) and her first novel in 1924. The Well of Loneliness was her fifth novel, published in 1928. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as typically suffered by "inverts," with predictably debilitating effects. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence".
At Bow Street in London on 16 November 1928, the novel found itself in the dock on a charge of obscenity, following a campaign by the Sunday Express. The most explicit phrase in the book was "and that night, they were not divided". The magistrate declared the book obscene and ordered the all copies be destroyed. More information about the trial can be found here. Hall appealed but lost (after only five minutes of deliberation!).
The book was finally printed in the UK in 1949 and has been printed continuously ever since then. In 1974, it was a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime (!), showing how times have changed!
Radliffe Hall was clearly an out and proud lesbian, living in a time when that was not an easy thing to do. She wrote The Well of Loneliness, a groundbreaking call for acceptance for lesbians and argued that it was not an obscene publication. She was clearly an LGBT hero.
Previous LGBT heroes
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