Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Bryher
-
Standard Name: Bryher
Birth Name: Annie Winifred Ellerman
Self-constructed Name: Bryher
Indexed Name: A. W. Ellerman
Indexed Name: Winifred Bryher
Indexed Name: W. Bryher
Nickname: Dolly
Nickname: Boy
In considering the paucity of credit given to Bryher for her patronage of the influential Contact Press
, critic Jayne Marek
describes her as an invisible woman.
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
116
Bryher is even less recognized as a writer than a patron: most of her texts are now out of print and have received little critical attention. Her novels, poems, memoirs, and criticism, together spanning much of the twentieth century, form a significant contribution to the development of Anglo-American modernism, particularly through their French and Imagist influences, and their explorations of topics including women's education, gender mutability, psychoanalysis, and film technology.
The father this time was Bryher
's second husband, Kenneth Macpherson
, with whom HD had been having an affair since 1926, and whom, some months before this event, she had allowed to adopt her...
Occupation
H. D.
HD's film writing of the 1930s went along with the actual making of films. Together with Bryher
, she helped to set up Pool Films or POOL
, whose productions included Wingbeat, Foothills...
Friends, Associates
Margiad Evans
A young poet whom she calls B—, a descendant of Percy Shelley
(and therefore presumably of Mary Shelley
too), whom she had known since his boyhood, moved from his own cottage to stay with ME
Dedications
Margiad Evans
She wrote this book, at least the later parts of it, while she was actually going through the bodily experiences—epilepsy, pregnancy—that it describes.
Evans, Margiad. A Ray of Darkness. Arthur Barker.
129, 133
The dedication reads: This manuscript is hopefully and precociously dedicated...
Textual Production
Margiad Evans
Most of her manuscripts (a sizeable collection) are in the National Library of Wales
at Aberystwyth. Her letters to Bryher
, with their enclosures—drawings, the Irish journal, a manuscript of A Ray of Darkness...
Residence
Margiad Evans
ME
and her husband, Michael Williams
, travelled to Ireland on money anonymously supplied as a literary benefaction by Bryher
.
Evans, Margiad. A Ray of Darkness. Arthur Barker.
43
Reception
Margiad Evans
ME
heard that she was to receive a sum of money which an anonymous benefactor (whom she obliquely identifies as Bryher
) awarded each year to a little-known writer to fund holiday travel.
Evans, Margiad. A Ray of Darkness. Arthur Barker.
43
Friends, Associates
Margiad Evans
Though a lover of solitude, ME
was also sociable. She made lifelong friendships on her stay in Brittany at the age of seventeen. While staying with Mrs Lloyd-Jones she met Professor Ifor Williams
and his...
Wealth and Poverty
Margiad Evans
Money was always tight throughout ME
's life. She began her writing career relying on her father's tiny pension to supplement her earnings from intermittent paid work, and it was a problem for her when...
Dedications
Lettice Cooper
LC
dedicated to her fellow novelist Bryher
her novel Late in the Afternoon, set in Tuscany, London, and an industrial town in northern England.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
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...
Paul Valéry
asked SB
to translate his essay Littérature; it was later published in Bryher
's Life and Letters Today, under the signature of Sylvia Beach
and the Author.
Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties. W. W. Norton.
333
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
