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.
After reading the highly enthusiastic pamphlet, Lowell sent an appreciative message to Bryher, but expressed some (ultimately unfounded) concern about it in another letter to H. D.
: the girl has insight and a good...
Friends, Associates
Bryher
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
Textual Production
Bryher
Bryher also wrote publicly on H. D.
's work. After H. D.'s 1921 collection Hymen was pronounced deadening and monotonous
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, http://Rutherford HSS.
36
by the Times Literary Supplement, Bryher (who had helped publish the volume) praised...
Textual Production
Anne Carson
AC
's The Albertine Workout was published as New Directions Poetry Pamphlet no. 13 (in a series whose no. 7 was H. D.
's Vale Ave).
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...
Occupation
T. S. Eliot
TSE
became Assistant Editor of The Egoist (in succession nominally to Richard Aldington
, actually to Aldington's wife, H. D.
), a position he held until 1919.
Parker, Peter, editor. A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers. Oxford University Press.
216
Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Robert Johnson.
(June 1917): front page
Textual Production
T. S. Eliot
In June 1917 TSE
took over the post of literary editor at The Egoist from his fellow American expatriate the poet and critic H. D.
(though nominally from her then husband Richard Aldington
, who...
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
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Ellen Harrison
JEH
's work exerted a palpable influence on the Modernist movement in literature, and both her persona and her life's work were represented, sometimes in much modified form, in many creative texts. Critic Julia Briggs
Literary responses
Violet Hunt
VH
's biography was warmly received both formally and informally. H. D.
(Hilda Doolittle
) wrote to Hunt from Switzerland on 30 September 1932, imagining [h]ow happy the book must make you! The style...
Plans were afoot to relaunch The Freewoman shortly after it collapsed in its first form. When Marsden retreated to Southport for health reasons, Rebecca West
acted as liaison between her and supporters in the Freewoman Discussion Circle
Textual Features
Dora Marsden
A marked difference separating The New Freewoman from its predecessor was its increased literary content, at first secured mainly by Rebecca West
. West recruited Ezra Pound
to The New Freewoman after meeting him at...
Textual Production
Dora Marsden
Assistant editors were Richard Aldington
and Leonard Compton-Rickett
, and later H. D.
(when Aldington went to war in June 1916) and T. S. Eliot
(from July 1917). Contributors of creative work and critical reviews...
