Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
H. D.
-
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.
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
Friends, Associates
Marianne Moore
MM
corresponded with T. S. Eliot
from 1921 until the year before his death. She was a friend of H. D.
and of Bryher
, and her editors believe that every one of her five...
Friends, Associates
Ivy Compton-Burnett
The shifting, erratic, oddly mixed wartime social scene
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
166
enabled ICB
to become more outgoing, and she established friendships with H. D.
, Bryher
, and Una Pope-Hennessy
. She called HD Mrs Aldington...
Friends, Associates
Ezra Pound
While in London, EP
, together with H. D.
, became an Imagiste.
Nadel, Ira Bruce, editor. “Chronology; Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge University Press, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1.
xix
Friends, Associates
Bryher
Bryher
and sexologist Havelock Ellis
began a twenty-year association. This was encouraged by H. D.
, who knew of their mutual interest in depictions of cross-dressing women in Elizabethan drama.
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, http://Rutherford HSS.
67 and n68
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins.
287
Friends, Associates
Bryher
The same year Bryher provided emotional and financial support for H. D.
when the latter suffered a breakdown and entered a Swiss clinic.
Quartermain, Peter, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 45. Gale Research.
138
After this, though their lives remained closely linked, Bryher lived largely alone.
Friends, Associates
Nina Hamnett
The following year NH
met Anna Wickham
, who took her in when she had flu, with a dangerously high temperature, and did not want to go back to her family. At that time NH
Friends, Associates
Gertrude Stein
Over the years, the old crowd had begun to disperse and the Saturday evening salons were frequented more by writers and less by artists. Although GS
had published only a few volumes and had often...
Friends, Associates
Dorothy Richardson
One of these was Bryher's companion H. D.
, whom Richardson regarded as the Poet incarnate,
Richardson, Dorothy. “Chronology; Editorial Commentary”. Windows on Modernism: Selected Letters of Dorothy Richardson, edited by Gloria G. Fromm, University of Georgia Press, p. xxix - xxxiii; various pages.
36
and whose friendship she relished. In a note to Bryher in 1924, she comments that several letters...
Travelling from Switzerland, Bryher
arrived at 49 Lowndes Square, London , the home of her companion H. D.
The two lived there through the rest of the Second World War.
Bryher,. The Days of Mars. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
3
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
As editor, HSW
attempted to recruit Storm Jameson
for the paper, but Jameson unhappily could not accept a full-time position. She also began to acquaint herself with contributors, such as H. D.
, whom she...
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...
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.
