Despite its outrageous ventures into sexuality, Orlando evaded heavy censorship because of its humor and fantasy. Virginia Woolf did have cause to remove her references to Sappho and lesbian love before printing. Still, the "homosexual content" in the remains of the book made Richard Kennedy of the Hogarth Press report difficulty selling Orlando to a bookstore in Edinburgh.
While Orlando was enjoying its greatly successful first publication, another novel created a huge amount of controversy. On November 9, 1928, an obscenity case was brought against Jonathan Cape for publishing The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall's novel about the depths of misery as discovered by a lesbian.
Woolf, with friends E.M. Forster and Vita Sackville-West, rose in protest of the Home Secretary's censorship. After agreeing to stand as witness, Woolf gave evidence. But even testimony of expert witnesses were refused by Sir Chartres Biron, the judge who was determined to rule the book as an obscene libel that should be destroyed.
The Well of Loneliness is recommendable as a social study. (Woolf and others defended it politically more than artistically.) The infamous book offers a very depressing look at a well-to-do English family who raises their female child like a boy, beginning with christening her Stephen Gordon. She grows up with "inverted" desires, which cause her to be relegated from the family, their estate, and general society. Radclyffe Hall drew on her own relationships to write The Well of Loneliness.