On this day in literature

On this day in 1928, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, regarded by most as the first lesbian novel, was judged by the British courts to be obscene. Many of the notable writers asked to defend the book excused themselves -- 'for reasons you might guess,' Virginia Woolf wrote, though 'they generally put it down to the weak heart of a father or a cousin who is about to have twins.'