Saturday Life, A.
Inscribed To Olive Rinder And Evelyn Irons
Hall, Radclyffe. A Saturday Life. London: Arrowsmith, (1925).
8vo.; lightly foxed throughout; hinges cracked at page 96; brown printed wrappers; upper cover detached; light wear. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
Uncorrected proof of Hall’s third novel, a thinly veiled work of lesbian fiction which she dedicates to herself; it appeared three years before her better-known and more controversial work, The Well of Loneliness. The published version featured a dust-jacket designed by Hall’s lover, Una Tourbridge. Stated “Advance Copy / uncorrected proof / not to be circulated” on the upper panel, with a table of contents partially paginated, this lacks the frontispiece: in its stead is the notice, “block to come.” The copyright notice, on the verso of the title page, reads, “First published , 1925,” with a hefty blank space awaiting the month of publication.
A presentation copy, inscribed: To Olive Rinder and Irons. From [ ]. July 10 1927. Hall and Tourbridge acted as “big sisters” to their younger lesbian friends, Rinder and Evelyn Irons.
Hall had established enough of a reputation with her two earlier books – The Forge (1924) and The Unlit Lamp (1924) – that A Saturday Life sold almost 700 advance copies before it was published in April. Hall had been writing since she was a child; the first novel she completed was The Unlit Lamp, about which her agent, Robin Heath, and several publishers, expressed “gloomy doubts” (Hennegen, viii). They encouraged her to write something lighter. The Forge was the result; it easily found a publisher and met with popularity; and, as expected, paved the way for the publication of The Unlit Lamp. A Saturday Life followed less than a year later, and is described as a comic novel with a “serious, and connected purpose” (Hennegan, ix).
A Saturday Life tells the story of Sidonia, a precocious child whose father is dead and whose mother, Lady Shore, is more concerned with her Egyptological studies than with raising her daughter. Lady Shore’s best friend is a woman named Lady Frances Reide, to whom Lady Shore turns for practical child-rearing advice – although Lady Frances is unmarried and childless. In her Introduction to the 1987 Virago Press edition of A Saturday Life, Hennegen calls Lady Frances an invert – the mot préféré for lesbians in early twentieth century Britain. “Everything about Frances – her ‘masculine’ house, ‘gentlemanly’ graying temples, androgynously aquiline face, ‘mannish’ clothes – declares, codedly but unmistakably, her inversion” (Hennegen, p. xiv). Her devotion to the scatty Lady Shore is another indication of her sexual preference; and, later, her interactions with the adult Sidonia reflect the same inclination. Essentially, Sidonia and Lady Frances illustrate two paths that women can follow: Sidonia chooses traditional “womanhood” by becoming a wife and a mother; Lady Frances remains true to her sexual identity. However, Hennegen explains, “Hall gives us no reason to believe that Sidonia is now securely moored. Doubt hovers over all. …A Saturday Life ends with a marriage and a baby. In life itself, that isn’t the end of the story. …Once Sidonia discovers it, anything may happen” (Hennegen, p. xvii).
Hall (1880-1943) was born Marguerite Radclyffe Hall, in Bournemouth, England. While she did not lack material wealth – she inherited her father’s estate while she was still in her teens – she received scant parental love or encouragement throughout her childhood. She curbed her loneliness by playing piano and writing music; she also studied at King’s College in London, and then abroad in Germany for one year. She called herself “John” (supposedly, in homage to her great-grandfather, whom she resembled), and took the name “Radclyffe Hall” around the time she reached her inheritance.
In 1906, she paid for the publication of ‘Twixt Earth and Stars: Poems. These poems were originally written
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