H. D.

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Standard Name: H. D.
Used Form: Hilda Doolittle
Birth Name: Hilda Doolittle
Married Name: Hilda Aldington
Self-constructed Name: H. D.
Pseudonym: John Helforth
Pseudonym: Edith Gray
Pseudonym: Helga Dorn
Pseudonym: J. Beran
Pseudonym: Rhoda Peter
Pseudonym: Helga Dart
Pseudonym: Delia Alton
Nickname: Dryad
Nickname: Dooley
Nickname: Astraea
HD, born American, who took British nationality after a marriage which lasted longer on paper than in practice, was a key figure in the international Imagist movement of the early twentieth century and in modernism more broadly: both through her own poetry and through her editing and dissemination of the work of others. As well as her imagistic pieces, she wrote complex longer poems (most published during her lifetime), translation, essays, reviews, outlines for films, and autobiographical novels which are, like most of her work, explorations of the self. Here she writes à clef of her own past, but also builds a web of mythical and psycho-analytical reference which makes her texts dense as well as rewarding. She is an explorer of the female psyche, and of the relation of gender to creativity and of myth to psychoanalysis.
Black-and-white photo of H.D. posing, looking off-camera and leaning against a wall with her hands in her pockets. Her hair is styled in a page-boy cut.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Phyllis Bottome
When PB and Lislie spent the winter in Rome, Ezra Pound introduced Bottome to H. D. .
Bottome, Phyllis. The Challenge. Harcourt, Brace and Company.
384
Cultural formation Bryher
From an early age, she fostered relationships with such innovative contemporaries as H. D. , Dorothy Richardson , Sylvia Beach , and Marianne Moore . In her life writings, Bryher places most importance on her...
Literary responses Bryher
In an Egoist review, Richard Aldington praised Bryher for following the literary-literal principles recently established by the Poets' Translation Series, which he and H. D. were running at the Egoist Press , and which...
Friends, Associates Bryher
The women critiqued and promoted each other's work, and in 1918 Lowell introduced Bryher to H. D. 's poetry.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press.
35-6, 219
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
116
Material Conditions of Writing Bryher
When Bryher and her companion H. D. travelled to Greece in the spring of 1920, the trip profoundly affected the personal and professional outlook of each; these poems were part of the result.
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins.
191
Quartermain, Peter, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 45. Gale Research.
128
Friends, Associates Bryher
Bryher read and was highly enthusiastic about Marianne Moore 's poetry, which H. D. had recommended to her. In 1921, following their meeting in the United States, Bryher arranged and paid for the publication...
Intertextuality and Influence Bryher
This collection marked Bryher's entry into modernism. Charting the constantly recurring, specifically Greek images, colours, and other motifs in Bryher's poems, Diana Collecott links them to H. D. 's poetry, especially The Contest and Hipparchia...
Occupation Bryher
With funds and additional production assistance, Bryher contributed to Weaver 's Egoist Press 's Poets' Translation Series. She also subsidized the publication of Hymen by H. D. , which, like Moore's collection, was released...
Intertextuality and Influence Bryher
Bryher's Poetry pieces appear again, along with others, in this volume. Focusing especially on the poems Amazon and Eos, Susan Stanford Friedman observes Bryher's development of an Artemisian discourse
Friedman, Susan Stanford. Penelope’s Web: Gender, Modernity, H.D.’s Fiction. Cambridge University Press, http://Rutherford HSS.
193
shared with H. D.
Wealth and Poverty Bryher
Bryher soon provided Richardson (as she did H. D. ) with a trust fund that yielded £250 a year.
Quartermain, Peter, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 45. Gale Research.
132
Intertextuality and Influence Bryher
Through meeting and observing these women and through her reading (including the Elizabethans, a Futurist manifesto, and H. D. 's poetry), Nancy works to stretch her ideas beyond the often limited, conventional possibilities for women...
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
In her first memoir, Bryher includes an evocative account of the meeting: [t]he door opened and I started in surprise. I had seen the face before, on a Greek statue or in some indefinable territory...
Intertextuality and Influence Bryher
This text was inspired by the author's continued attachment to H. D. , as well as her long-wished-for trip to the United States, which she took with H. D. and the latter's daughter, Perdita
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
During most of the intervening years, they worked, travelled, and lived together, sharing such intimate tasks as the raising of H. D. 's daughter Perdita , who referred to them as my two mothers...
Textual Production Bryher
As editors, Bryher and Kenneth Macpherson ensured Close Up's international, interdisciplinary emphases by publishing works by and on Sergei Eisenstein , G. W. Pabst , H. D. , Dorothy Richardson , Gertrude Stein , and Man Ray .
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
118-20

Timeline

July 1927: Close up. Devoted to the Art of Film began...

Writing climate item

July 1927

Close up. Devoted to the Art of Film began monthly publication in Territet near Montreux, Switzerland.

Early 1936: The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by...

Writing climate item

Early 1936

The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts (who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot ), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...

Texts

H. D.,. Asphodel. Editor Spoo, Robert, Duke University Press, 1992.
H. D.,. Bid Me to Live. Grove, 1960.
H. D.,. By Avon River. Macmillan, 1949.
H. D., and Ezra Pound. End to Torment. Editors Pearson, Norman Holmes and Michael King, New Directions, 1979.
H. D.,. Hedylus. Basil Blackwell, 1928.
H. D.,. Helen in Egypt. Grove, 1961.
H. D.,. Heliodora, and Other Poems. Jonathan Cape, 1924.
H. D.,. Hermetic Definition. New Directions, 1972.
H. D.,. HERmione. New Directions, 1981.
H. D.,. Hymen. Egoist, 1921.
Aldington, Richard, and H. D. “Introduction and Commentary”. Richard Aldington and H.D.: The Early Years in Letters, edited by Caroline Zilboorg, Indiana University Press, 1992, p. Various pages.
Aldington, Richard, and H. D. “Introduction and Commentary”. Richard Aldington and H.D.: The Later Years in Letters, edited by Caroline Zilboorg, Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 1 - 14; various pages.
H. D.,. Notes on Thought and Vision. City Lights Books, 1983.
H. D.,. Paint It Today. Editor Laity, Cassandra, New York University Press, 1992.
H. D.,. Palimpsest. Contact Editions, 1926.
H. D.,. “Review of The Farmer’s Bride by Charlotte Mew”. The Egoist, Vol.
3
, No. 9, p. 135.
H. D.,. Sea Garden. Constable, 1916.
H. D.,. The Flowering of the Rod. Oxford University Press, 1946.
H. D.,. The Gift. New Directions, 1982.
H. D.,. The Walls Do Not Fall. Oxford University Press, 1944.
H. D.,. Tribute To Freud. Pantheon, 1956.
H. D.,. Tribute to the Angels. Oxford University Press, 1945.