H. D.

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Standard Name: H. D.
Used Form: Hilda Doolittle
Birth Name: Hilda Doolittle
Married Name: Hilda Aldington
Self-constructed Name: H. D.
Pseudonym: John Helforth
Pseudonym: Edith Gray
Pseudonym: Helga Dorn
Pseudonym: J. Beran
Pseudonym: Rhoda Peter
Pseudonym: Helga Dart
Pseudonym: Delia Alton
Nickname: Dryad
Nickname: Dooley
Nickname: Astraea
HD, born American, who took British nationality after a marriage which lasted longer on paper than in practice, was a key figure in the international Imagist movement of the early twentieth century and in modernism more broadly: both through her own poetry and through her editing and dissemination of the work of others. As well as her imagistic pieces, she wrote complex longer poems (most published during her lifetime), translation, essays, reviews, outlines for films, and autobiographical novels which are, like most of her work, explorations of the self. Here she writes à clef of her own past, but also builds a web of mythical and psycho-analytical reference which makes her texts dense as well as rewarding. She is an explorer of the female psyche, and of the relation of gender to creativity and of myth to psychoanalysis.
Black-and-white photo of H.D. posing, looking off-camera and leaning against a wall with her hands in her pockets. Her hair is styled in a page-boy cut.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Bryher
From an early age, she fostered relationships with such innovative contemporaries as H. D. , Dorothy Richardson , Sylvia Beach , and Marianne Moore . In her life writings, Bryher places most importance on her...
Cultural formation Bryher
Bryher writes that besides cross-dressing, other favourite topics of discussion between herself and Ellis included birth control, which she argued was far more important to women than votes.
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins, 1963.
197
By this time she had read...
death May Sinclair
She was cremated after her funeral on 18 November at the chapel in Golders Green Cemetery. Her ashes were buried in Hampstead churchyard.
Boll, Theophilus E. M. Miss May Sinclair: Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973.
155
In a will made almost thirty years before she died...
Education Marianne Moore
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, 1997.
3
then took her BA in 1908 at a women's college, Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania. She followed that with...
Family and Intimate relationships Sappho
Since the late 1890s Sappho has been claimed by many lesbian writers, including Michael Field , H. D. , and Judy Grahn , not only as a writing role model but as a crucial forerunner...
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
Following H. D. 's request, Bryher and Kenneth Macpherson adopted H. D. 's daughter Perdita (later Schaffner) .
Aldington, Richard, and H. D. “Introduction and Commentary”. Richard Aldington and H.D.: The Later Years in Letters, edited by Caroline Zilboorg, Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 1 - 14; various pages.
2: 18
Family and Intimate relationships Ezra Pound
From his teens (in 1901) until 1911, EP had an on-again, off-again relationship with poet H. D. , who remained a close friend until Pound's involvement with fascism in the early 1930s alienated her. A...
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
In her first memoir, Bryher includes an evocative account of the meeting: [t]he door opened and I started in surprise. I had seen the face before, on a Greek statue or in some indefinable territory...
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
During most of the intervening years, they worked, travelled, and lived together, sharing such intimate tasks as the raising of H. D. 's daughter Perdita , who referred to them as my two mothers...
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
Following Amy Lowell 's suggestion, Bryher read and was profoundly impressed by H. D. 's poetry collection Sea Garden, 1916. In July, Bryher wrote H. D. an appreciative letter that prompted their first meeting.
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins, 1963.
187-8
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press, 1987.
35
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
At the start of their platonic marriage, Macpherson lived with Bryher, H. D. , and H. D.'s daughter Perdita , at Territet. H. D. and Macpherson had been lovers since 1926.
Quartermain, Peter, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 45. Gale Research, 1986.
132
Perdita Schaffner...
Friends, Associates Bryher
Bryher and sexologist Havelock Ellis began a twenty-year association. This was encouraged by H. D. , who knew of their mutual interest in depictions of cross-dressing women in Elizabethan drama.
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, 1999, http://Rutherford HSS.
67 and n68
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins, 1963.
287
Friends, Associates Bryher
The same year Bryher provided emotional and financial support for H. D. when the latter suffered a breakdown and entered a Swiss clinic.
Quartermain, Peter, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 45. Gale Research, 1986.
138
After this, though their lives remained closely linked, Bryher lived largely alone.
Friends, Associates Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW visited Paris with Bryher , H. D. , and Richard McAlmon . While there she met Sylvia Beach .
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking, 1970.
244
Friends, Associates Dorothy Richardson
One of these was Bryher's companion H. D. , whom Richardson regarded as the Poet incarnate,
Richardson, Dorothy. “Chronology; Editorial Commentary”. Windows on Modernism: Selected Letters of Dorothy Richardson, edited by Gloria G. Fromm, University of Georgia Press, 1995, p. xxix - xxxiii; various pages.
36
and whose friendship she relished. In a note to Bryher in 1924, she comments that several letters...

Timeline

July 1927: Close up. Devoted to the Art of Film began...

Writing climate item

July 1927

Close up. Devoted to the Art of Film began monthly publication in Territet near Montreux, Switzerland.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press, 1987.
276
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky, 1995.
129-30

Early 1936: The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by...

Writing climate item

Early 1936

The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts (who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot ), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...

Texts

H. D.,. Asphodel. Editor Spoo, Robert, Duke University Press, 1992.
H. D.,. Bid Me to Live. Grove, 1960.
H. D.,. By Avon River. Macmillan, 1949.
H. D., and Ezra Pound. End to Torment. Editors Pearson, Norman Holmes and Michael King, New Directions, 1979.
H. D.,. Hedylus. Basil Blackwell, 1928.
H. D.,. Helen in Egypt. Grove, 1961.
H. D.,. Heliodora, and Other Poems. Jonathan Cape, 1924.
H. D.,. Hermetic Definition. New Directions, 1972.
H. D.,. HERmione. New Directions, 1981.
H. D.,. Hymen. Egoist, 1921.
Aldington, Richard, and H. D. “Introduction and Commentary”. Richard Aldington and H.D.: The Early Years in Letters, edited by Caroline Zilboorg, Indiana University Press, 1992, p. Various pages.
Aldington, Richard, and H. D. “Introduction and Commentary”. Richard Aldington and H.D.: The Later Years in Letters, edited by Caroline Zilboorg, Manchester University Press, 1995, pp. 1 - 14; various pages.
H. D.,. Notes on Thought and Vision. City Lights Books, 1983.
H. D.,. Paint It Today. Editor Laity, Cassandra, New York University Press, 1992.
H. D.,. Palimpsest. Contact Editions, 1926.
H. D.,. “Review of The Farmer’s Bride by Charlotte Mew”. The Egoist, Vol.
3
, No. 9, p. 135.
H. D.,. Sea Garden. Constable, 1916.
H. D.,. Selected Poems. Grove, 1957.
H. D.,. The Flowering of the Rod. Oxford University Press, 1946.
H. D.,. The Gift. New Directions, 1982.
H. D.,. The Walls Do Not Fall. Oxford University Press, 1944.
H. D.,. Tribute To Freud. Pantheon, 1956.
H. D.,. Tribute to the Angels. Oxford University Press, 1945.
H. D., and Norman Holmes Pearson. Trilogy. New Directions, 1973.