Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Dorothy Richardson
-
Standard Name: Richardson, Dorothy
Birth Name: Dorothy Miller Richardson
Nickname: Tottie
Pseudonym: A Layman
DR
was in her time, and remains, a singular novelist. Her fiction has never conformed to accepted categories, and still challenges literary critics. Her major work, the series of novels comprising Pilgrimage, is now being read as essential to the development of twentieth-century literature and feminism for its thematic and technical innovations. In addition to Pilgrimage, she wrote non-fiction monographs including art criticism, and contributed numerous reviews, essays, sketches, short stories, and poems to periodicals. She also translated several texts from German and French into English. The term stream of consciousness was first applied to literature in a 1918 review of DR
's work by May Sinclair
.
Friends and patrons Dorothy Richardson
and Bryher
were tireless in recruiting women subscribers to sustain Shakespeare and Company
.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton.
361
Publishing
Sylvia Beach
SB
and Adrienne Monnier
translated Dorothy Richardson
's About Punctuation in January 1935.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton.
349
This was printed in the first issue of the new revue Mesures. Mesures was managed by Adrienne Monnier
with Jane Van Meter
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Marjorie Bowen
MB
credits British women novelists for modifying the methods of the great European novelists, noting in particular Dorothy Richardson
's perfection of the stream-of-consciousness technique. She draws a contrast between Dorothy Richardson
's Miriam and...
Birch, Sarah. Christine Brooke-Rose and Contemporary Fiction. Clarendon Press.
228
Her own summary of her career, however, was that she tried...
Textual Production
Bryher
Desmond MacCarthy
had launched Life and Letters in June 1928; it issued its last number this month, and Bryher's new publication first appeared in September. It merged it with the London Mercury after May 1939...
Friends, Associates
Bryher
Bryher
began a friendship with Dorothy Richardson
over tea at Richardson's London home. Bryher secured her invitation with a letter to the author that began, [w]hen I want to remember England, I think of your...
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...
Reception
Bryher
In addition to her lived experiences, Bryher's writing is closely informed by Dorothy Richardson
's critiques of women's schooling in her Pilgrimage series.
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins.
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
118-20
Literary responses
Mary Butts
The first edition of Ashe of Rings was not extensively reviewed. Although an unimpressed reviewer for the Liverpool Courier characterised it as another bad case of Futurism (like the writing of James Joyce
and Dorothy Richardson
Literary responses
Mary Butts
Although her work received mixed reviews, MB
was generally recognized as an important if eccentric literary figure during her lifetime, and she was highly praised by other modernist writers, including Ezra Pound
, Marianne Moore
Intertextuality and Influence
Hélène Cixous
Critic Jean Radford
, for one, holds that the concept of écriture féminine put forward by Cixous here and in later works had been to some extent anticipated by Dorothy Richardson
.
Winning, Joanne. The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson. University of Wisconsin Press.
During 1927-33 HD contributed to the avant-garde, influential film magazine Close Up: Devoted to the Art of Films, which Bryher
funded and of which Kenneth Macpherson
was the official editor. It had a temperate...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
VH
had an affair with H. G. Wells
while he was married to his second wife
and also involved with author Dorothy Richardson
.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
118
Timeline
No timeline events available.
Texts
Richardson, Dorothy. Backwater. Duckworth, 1916.
Richardson, Dorothy. “Chronology; Editorial Commentary”. Windows on Modernism: Selected Letters of Dorothy Richardson, edited by Gloria G. Fromm, University of Georgia Press, 1995, p. xxix - xxxiii; various pages.
Richardson, Dorothy. Clear Horizon. Dent and Cresset, 1935.
Richardson, Dorothy. Dawn’s Left Hand. Duckworth, 1931.
Richardson, Dorothy, and Dorothy Richardson. “De la ponctuation”. Mesures, translated by. Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier.
Richardson, Dorothy. Deadlock. Duckworth, 1921.
Richardson, Dorothy. Gleanings from the Works of George Fox. Headley, 1914.
Richardson, Dorothy. Honeycomb. Duckworth, 1917.
Richardson, Dorothy. Interim. Duckworth, 1919.
Tate, Trudi, and Dorothy Richardson. “Introduction”. Journey to Paradise, Virago, 1989, p. ix - xxxvi.
Richardson, Dorothy. John Austen and the Inseparables. Jackson, 1930.
Richardson, Dorothy, and Trudi Tate. Journey to Paradise. Virago, 1989.
Richardson, Dorothy. Oberland. Duckworth, 1927.
Richardson, Dorothy. Pilgrimage. Dent and Cresset, 1938.
Richardson, Dorothy, and Walter Allen. Pilgrimage. J. M. Dent and Sons, 1967.
Richardson, Dorothy, and J. D. Beresford. Pointed Roofs. Duckworth, 1915.