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.
MM
attended the Metzger Institute, the private girls' school where her mother was a teacher,
Moore, Marianne. The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore. Editors Costello, Bonnie et al., Knopf.
3
then took her BA in 1908 at a women's college, Bryn Mawr
in Pennsylvania. She followed that with...
Publishing
Dorothy Richardson
DR
contributed over twenty essays and reviews, including the regular column, Continuous Performance, to Bryher
's avant-garde film magazine Close Up.
Hanscombe, Gillian. The Art of Life: Dorothy Richardson and the Development of Feminist Consciousness. Peter Owen.
189-90
Staley, Thomas F., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 36. Gale Research.
217
Friends, Associates
Dorothy Richardson
In June 1923, DR
met and began a friendship with Bryher
, who went on to provide her with various kinds of support for the rest of her life. Gloria Fromm
describes Bryher as a...
Travel
Dorothy Richardson
Their trip was financed by Bryher
, who also invited them to stay with her and H. D.
at Bryher's villa on the shore of Lake Geneva for a month.
Fromm, Gloria G. Dorothy Richardson: A Biography. University of Illinois Press.
157-8
Wealth and Poverty
Dorothy Richardson
DR
also accepted financial assistance from friends and other sources. Early in their friendship Bryher
established a trust fund that yielded Richardson £250 annually. She also committed £120, tax free, to Richardson for each year...
Health
Dorothy Richardson
Macmillan was an American who had intended to go into the priesthood, but left an Episcopal seminary to come to England when he found himself unable to continue his vocation. By the time DR
went...
Reception
Dorothy Richardson
DR
first read Proust
(Swann's Way) in December 1922. She devoted much time to her reading and thinking about Proust, and relished his writing for being a thousand things at once, with the...
Reception
Dorothy Richardson
DR
thought less of Woolf
's writing, and disliked juxtapositions of their work by critics. In 1937 she refused requests from Life and Letters Today and the London Mercury to review Woolf's The Years because...
Intertextuality and Influence
Dorothy Richardson
Though DR
did not meet her future friend and supporter Bryher
until several months after the publication of Revolving Lights in early 1923, critics have noted many points of thematic and structural similarity between Richardson's...
Publishing
Dorothy Richardson
Having begun writing poetry in mid-1923, Richardson was initially reluctant to share her poems with even her intimates: for instance with Bryher, who was a close friend and sometimes a creative confidante to H. D.
Textual Production
Dorothy Richardson
The volume contains a selection of Richardson's approximately 1,800 surviving letters, dated from 1901. It includes her personal and professional letters to such correspondents as Bryher
, H. D.
, Sylvia Beach
, Amy Catherine (Jane)
Friends, Associates
Edith Sitwell
In Paris ES
frequented Sylvia Beach
's bookshop. She saw more than before of Gertrude Stein
, whom she liked for her personal qualities but called the last writer whom any other writer in the...
She had begun writing poetry again after about a year of war, having written none since Gold Coast Customs. The best-known poem in this volume, Still Falls the Rain (sometimes called Song of the...
Textual Production
Edith Sitwell
John Lehmann
and Derek Parker
had published an earlier collection with the same title in 1970, but it was less valuable than it could have been because Edith's surviving brother, Sacheverell, decreed that all family...
