The Well Of Emptiness

Many a book in history gained notoriety

for it's content and got itself banned

in one country but remained published

in the rest of the world, in translation.  

Such was the fate of 'The Well Of Loneliness'
which was banned in the UK in 1929
in a trail that the press made hay with,

or rather sold acres of newsprint 

on the back of as the judge 

revelled in being quoted in the press.

The crime of the book was it's unrepentant
mixing of gender. As 'she' became 'he'
so the relationships in it were lesbian
with one partner decidedly masculine.

Radclyffe Hall's book was banned
in the same era in which 'Lady Chatterly's Lover'
was bowdlerised to please the ruling classes.

Hall's book was republished legally

in the UK in 1957, fourteen years

after the it's author died,
with far less fuss than Lawrence's book
courted in the courts three years later

where lawyers publicly fought
to get the book published as written,

whilst mocking censorship with gusto.

But banning a book

and then making it legal

does not make it readable;

it merely makes the book notorious

and the trail more interesting

than the book ever could be.