Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ezra Pound
-
Standard Name: Pound, Ezra
EP
, American poet, critic, editor, translator, and key figure in the literary modernist movement, lived in London from 1908 to 1921, in Paris from 1921 to 1924, and then in Italy until the end of the Second World War. His vociferous, antisemitic support for Italian fascism earned him thirteen years in a US hospital for the criminally insane. He worked from 1917 until near the end of his life on his massive and generically multiple epic poem Cantos, which he published in serial fragments.
In its latter years the Dreadnought took on a more literary tone, featuring stories by Anatole France
and poetry by Ezra Pound
. One of those who worked on it with SP
was Claude McKay
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Marianne Moore
Her subjects included writers like Louise Bogan
and Ezra Pound
, and artists like Anna Pavlova
.
Friends, Associates
Marianne Moore
MMmade her modernist debut in New York in November 1915, meeting all the avant-garde.
Williams, Mary-Kay. “What a Mother”. London Review of Books, Vol.
37
, No. 23, p. 19021.
20
Her friendship with Ezra Pound
began by letter in 1918. She had already written a poem titled with his...
Literary responses
Marianne Moore
Eliot
assessed her in his introduction as the greatest living master of light rhyme, and as one of those few who have done the language some service in my lifetime.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Her brother wrote of The...
Literary responses
Edna St Vincent Millay
Edmund Wilson
disliked this work, apparently because the communist in it is just as ridiculous as the stockbroker, so that no authoritative, authorized, left-wing voice is supplied.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
406
But its success was stunning.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
405
Publishing
Charlotte Mew
May Sinclair
helped to introduce CM
's work to Ezra Pound
, who received it enthusiastically and helped to get it published here. The Egoist unfortunately did not pay.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
West became a regular contributor to The Freewoman and a prominent member of the London branch of the Freewoman Discussion Circle
. She also played central roles in the revival and transformation of The Freewoman...
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 Features
Dora Marsden
Regarding the influence on each other of Imagism and Marsden's egoism, Andrew Thacker
notes their shared emphases (from Bergson
) on the weaknesses of abstract rhetoric in art and politics, and their valuing of intuition...
This journal had an auspicious beginning: Marsden announced in January that it would serialize James Joyce
's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Marsden played an important role in Joyce's early...
Textual Production
Dora Marsden
But DM
's involvement with The Egoist began to slacken shortly after its début. This was in part because of her distance from London (in Southport), her desire to focus on her philosophical writing...
Textual Production
Dora Marsden
Formerly stored in a wicker trunk at the home of her niece Elaine Dyson Bate, DM
's papers are now at Princeton University
. Her collection contains manuscripts, papers, and letters to and from Rebecca West