The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. 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 having a debilitating effect on inverts. The novel portrays inversion as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence". The novel became the target of a campaign by James Douglas, editor of the Sunday Express newspaper, who wrote "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." Although its only sexual reference consists of the words "and that night, they were not divided", a British court judged it obscene because it defended "unnatural practices between women". In the United States the book survived legal challenges in New York state and in Customs Court.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_of_Loneliness

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1590:

Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen consort of Scotland in the abbey church at Holyrood Palace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark

1863:

Rosalía de Castro published Cantares gallegos, a collection of her poetry, the first book in the Galician language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosal%C3%ADa_de_Castro

1914:

Albania officially recognized the area of Northern Epirus as an autonomous region within the Albanian state, which was never established due to World War I. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_of_Corfu

1995:

After 18 years as Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac was inaugurated as President of France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Chirac

2004:

Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Massachusetts

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

morpheme: (linguistics) The smallest linguistic unit within a word that can carry a meaning, such as "un-", "break", and "-able" in the word "unbreakable". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/morpheme

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Affection is the greatest of human feelings because it is made of respect, of lucidity, and light. To understand the truth and make one's self equal to it is everything; and to love is the same thing as to know and to understand. Affection, which I call also compassion, because I see no difference between them, dominates everything by reason of its clear sight. It is a sentiment as immense as if it were mad, and yet it is wise, and of human things it is the only perfect one. There is no great sentiment which is not completely held on the arms of compassion. --Henri Barbusse https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Barbusse