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.
H. D.
published with the Egoist Press
her poetry volume Hymen, dedicated to her lover Bryher
and her daughter, Perdita
.
Boughn, Michael. H.D.: A Bibliography 1905-1990. University Press of Virginia.
8
Publishing
H. D.
Between 1935 and 1950 HD had available as an outlet for her writing Life and Letters To-Day, the new magazine which Bryher
established through a merger of Life and Letters with The London Mercury...
Material Conditions of Writing
H. D.
H. D.
's aesthetic manifesto, Notes on Thought and Vision, written in July 1919 when she and Bryher
visited the Isles of Scilly, was posthumously published with the date of 1982.
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.
Boughn, Michael. H.D.: A Bibliography 1905-1990. University Press of Virginia.
75
Dedications
H. D.
She dedicated this section to Bryher
and Robert Herring
, but the second part, written about eighteen months later (following her postwar nervous breakdown) and titled The Guest, to Bryher alone.
Friedman, Susan Stanford. “’Remembering Shakespeare Always, But Remembering Him Differently’: H.D.’s By Avon River”. Sagetrieb, Vol.
2
, No. 2, pp. 45-70.
46-7, 53
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
H. D.
Like the later End to Torment, this relates its author's attachments to and disaffection from Lawrence
and Pound
, her (tor)mentors.
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.
Its material includes the end of HD's marriage and the beginning of her...
Residence
H. D.
The three women travelled through England and France, meeting musician Walter Rummel
in Paris and Ezra Pound's literary circle in London. HD was persuaded to stay there by her old friend Pound, who had...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
H. D.
These date from 1921-2 and (like their successor, HERmione, written in 1927 and published as Her in 1981), are romans à clef. They trace the events of HD's emotional life (she appears as Hermione...
Cultural formation
H. D.
Of these two companions, Bryher
identified herself as lesbian while HD did not. Some commentators, such as Janice Robinson
, have described the relationship between them as a lesbian marriage, although both took measures to...
Family and Intimate relationships
H. D.
It is now generally accepted among HD's biographers and critics that Cecil Gray
had fathered the child. HD informed her Richard Aldington
, her husband, of her pregnancy while he was still on active duty...
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
H. D.
HD's estrangement from Pound
continued for years after the end of the Second World War. Then, despite the disapproval of friends such as Bryher
and Sylvia Beach
, she renewed contact with him in 1960...
Health
H. D.
Not long after this, at the urging of Bryher
, she met with therapist Hanns Sachs
for psychoanalysis in Berlin. Bryher had also undergone psychoanalysis with Sachs. He diagnosed HD as having a mother...
Family and Intimate relationships
H. D.
The couple had been estranged since 1918, and separated since April 1919. The idea of divorce had first been mentioned in 1927, when Aldington hoped to marry Brigit Patmore
, but had been quickly dropped...
