Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Dora Marsden
-
Standard Name: Marsden, Dora
Birth Name: Dora Marsden
Following a notorious suffrage career, DM
founded, edited, and wrote for the highly influential journals The Freewoman, The New Freewoman, and The Egoist. She then wrote several books on the intersections among philosophy, religion, and science. Repeating the pattern of her lifetime, much of the critical attention accorded to Marsden in recent decades has focussed primarily on her early feminist activities and associations, rather than her pursuits in The Egoist or her monographs.
MG
, who was involved with Dora Marsden
in impeding Winston Churchill
's election rallies in Southport, received grave internal injuries when she was struck by one of the stewards.
Holton, Sandra Stanley. Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Routledge.
149
Textual Production
Mary Gawthorpe
MG
's name appeared as co-editor (after somewhat fraught negotiations with Dora Marsden
) on The Freewoman, whose first issue appeared on 23 November 1911.
Textual Production
Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW
deposited at the Oxford Philosophical Library
her completed manuscript entitled A History of the Concept of Time, a survey of outstanding philosophers from the time of the Greeks onwards.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
400
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
From August 1923 to 1931, HSW
rented accommodation next door to Dora Marsden
's converted cottage named Seldom Seen, at Glenridding in Westmorland. HSW
lived there for more than six months each year, doing...
Reception
Harriet Shaw Weaver
She thought her own style lame & dull, but editor Dora Marsden
liked her straightforward prose.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
73
Of her second review, published on 1 June 1914, Marsden complimented her: you use words very tersely &...
Reception
Harriet Shaw Weaver
Marsden
, always a supporter of HSW
's writing, called her column an institution, although it was a short-lived one.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
110
Literary historian Jayne E. Marek
believes that under HSW
's patronage The New...
Publishing
James Joyce
The Egoist serialised JJ
's autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: the serialisation began during the brief editorship of Dora Marsden
.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Parker, Alan. James Joyce: A Bibliography of His Writings, Critical Material, and Miscellanea. F. W. Faxon.
29
Publishing
Charlotte Mew
CM
published a poem, The Fête, in Dora Marsden
's The Egoist.
This is not the same poem as Fin de Fête.
Warner, Val. “New Light on Charlotte Mew”. PN Review, Vol.
24
, No. 1, pp. 43-7.
46
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research.
310
Author summary
Mary Gawthorpe
MG
, from a working-class family with a tradition of self-education, became a remarkable speaker and writer on behalf of women's suffrage. She co-edited The Freewoman, working somewhat uneasily with Dora Marsden
. Her...
politics
Mary Gawthorpe
One of her many arrests (this one together with Dora Marsden
and Rona Robinson
) came at Victoria University, Manchester
, on 4 October 1909, when they faced the prospect of prison and force-feeding, though...
Occupation
Rebecca West
RW
landed her first job as a journalist, as editor and writer for Dora Marsden
's feminist periodical, The Freewoman.
Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton.
17-18
Occupation
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
His attention to questions of power and representation helped spawn poststructuralist theory. His unregenerate misogyny—expressed in contempt for little bluestockings
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Michael Tanner. Twilight of the Idols; and, The Anti-Christ. Translator Holligdale, Reginald John, Penguin.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Michael Tanner. Twilight of the Idols; and, The Anti-Christ. Translator Holligdale, Reginald John, Penguin.
80
and...
Occupation
Ezra Pound
Dora Marsden
and Harriet Shaw Weaver
took on EP
as poetry editor for their journal The New Freewoman, whose first number came out on 19 June.
Nadel, Ira Bruce, editor. “Chronology; Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge University Press, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1.
xix
Occupation
Harriet Shaw Weaver
Dora Marsden
, then the editor, and Rebecca West
launched a much-needed subscription campaign in order to re-establish the journal on sound financial footing after it had run into trouble for publishing allegedly immoral contents....
Timeline
23 November 1911: Dora Marsden and Mary Gawthorpe edited the...
Building item
23 November 1911
Dora Marsden
and Mary Gawthorpe
edited the first issue of The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review, a paper about sexual reform.
1937: Stella Browne testified before a parliamentary...
Building item
1937
Stella Browne
testified before a parliamentary committee on abortion (which was then illegal), as a matter of public duty, about her knowledge in my own person that abortion was not necessarily fatal or injurious to...
Texts
Marsden, Dora. The Definition of the Godhead. Egoist, 1928.
Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Robert Johnson.
Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Kraus.
Marsden, Dora, and Mary Gawthorpe, editors. The Freewoman. Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney.
Marsden, Dora. The Mysteries of Christianity. Egoist, 1930.
Marsden, Dora, editor. The New Freewoman. Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney.
Marsden, Dora. The Philosophy of Time. Holywell, 1955.