Alison Hennegan is a lecturer at the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

and a Fellow of Trinity Hall. She is also a prominent campaigner for gay and lesbian rights in the UK and a journalist. Hennegan's academic work focuses on

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

and

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

themes in

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

, particularly in British

Modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

. She began writing her PhD thesis, “Literature and the Homosexual Cult, 1890–1920” in Cambridge in 1970, but her heavy involvement in gay activism forced her to put her research on hold. She returned to the academy in the 1980s and has published articles on the

reader,

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

and the

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

and

decadent movement The Decadent movement (Fr. ''décadence'', “decay”) was a late-19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality. The Decadent movement first flourished ...

s of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Other academic publications include scholarly introductions to the Virago Modern Classics editions of ''

Adam's Breed ''Adam's Breed'' was a 1926 novel by the English writer Radclyffe Hall. On its publication it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and the Femina Vie Heureuse prize for best English novel. It tells the story of a British-Italian wa ...

'' and ''

The Well of Loneliness ''The Well of Loneliness'' is a lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall that was first published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose " sexual inversion" (homo ...

'' by

Radclyffe Hall Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the novel ''The Well of Loneliness'', a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name Jo ...

. Her work in literary journalism has included a period as Literary Editor of the London fortnightly magazine ''

Gay News ''Gay News'' was a fortnightly newspaper in the United Kingdom founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). At the newspaper's height, circul ...

'' (1977–83), and regular articles in the weekly ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members ...

'' (1984–88). She has also been a prominent gay rights activist in the UK: she served as a Vice-Chair of the

Campaign for Homosexual Equality The Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) is a membership organisation in the United Kingdom with a stated aim from 1969 to promote legal and social equality for lesbians, gay men and bisexuals in England and Wales. Active throughout the 1970s ...

(1975–77) and National Organizer for the gay counselling organization FRIEND.

Publications

*'Introduction' to Radclyffe Hall's ''Well of Loneliness''. (Harmondsworth: Virago, 1982). *'Introduction' to Radclyffe Hall's ''Adam's Breed''. (Harmondsworth: Virago, 1986). *'On Becoming a Lesbian Reader.' in ''Sweet Dreams: Sexuality, Gender and Popular Fiction.'' by S. Radstone. (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998) pp. 165–190. *‘Personalities and Principles: Aspects of Literature and Life in 'fin-de-siecle' England’. In ''Fin de siecle and Its Legacy.'' by M. Teich and R. Porter. (Cambridge: CUP, 1990) pp. 190–215. *''The Lesbian Pillow Book'' (ed.) (London: Fourth Estate, 2000) *"Hea h and Home: Wilde Domestic Space." ''Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society'', vol. 27, no.3 (2002) *"Suffering into Wisdom: The Tragedy of Wilde". in ''Tragedy in Transition'', ed. Sarah Annes Brown and Catherine Silverstone, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) *"Victorian Girlhood: Eroticizing the Maternal, Maternalizing the Erotic: Same-Sex Relations between Girls, c. 1880-1920". in'' Children and Sexuality: From the Greeks to the Great War'', ed. George Rousseau (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

References

External links

Trinity Hall Page on Alison Hennegan

Trinity Hall names Hennegan as Fellow Commoner
* ttps://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/337931 Hennegan, A. (2002). "Hea(r)th and Home: Wilde Domestic Space." ''Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society'', vol. 27, no.3.(JSTOR Access Required)
Cambridge & Diversity: "Alison Hennegan: speaking out"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hennegan, Alison English literary critics British women literary critics Academics of the University of Cambridge English LGBT rights activists Living people Fellows of Trinity Hall, Cambridge Year of birth missing (living people)