Meet Joanna "John" Montolivet as she discovers the nature of the world and God's existence from her infancy to juvenescence. John dreams of the erotic...
Meet Joanna "John" Montolivet as she discovers the nature of the world and God's existence from her infancy to juvenescence. John dreams of the erotic and splendid, expressing her yearning through writing, reading great books of literature, and admiring the female figure and sensibility. Coming of age in a discordant family with a "famine" in her heart, she longs for love and passion, leading her to Catholicism, and most importantly, a desire for women. The desire for same-sex attraction meets at the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul. First published under the male pseudonym Christopher St. John in 1915, Christabel Marshall's work is regarded as the first Catholic lesbian novel. Unlike lesbian novels of the fin de si? cle and The New Woman Movement, John's journey of sapphic spirituality and sexuality is not a phase, but the beginning of a lifelong reverence of women. Written at a time of violent censorship and sexual oppression, Marshall's characters represent lesbian, trans, and androgynous people, thinly masked as cisgender and heterosexual. In this publication of Hungerheart, twenty-first-century readers can enjoy Marshall's deeply spiritual love of women in its full glory.
George Robb is Professor of History at William Paterson University of New Jersey. Born Christabel Marshall on October 24, 1871 in Exeter, southwest England, Christopher St. John was known to friends and colleagues as Chris. Active as a journalist and suffragist during the early part of the twentieth century, Marshall is best remembered today for work preserving the legacy of actor Ellen Terry than for their own feminist novels and plays. Marshall lived for over thirty years at Small Hythe, the Ellen Terry museum, with two intimate companions Edith (Edy) Terry and Clare (Tony) Atwood. They died in 1960 at the age of eighty-nine.<br>
