Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
H. D.
-
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.
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, http://Rutherford HSS.
67 and n68
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins.
287
Friends, Associates
Gertrude Stein
Over the years, the old crowd had begun to disperse and the Saturday evening salons were frequented more by writers and less by artists. Although GS
had published only a few volumes and had often...
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.
138
After this, though their lives remained closely linked, Bryher lived largely alone.
Friends, Associates
Nina Hamnett
The following year NH
met Anna Wickham
, who took her in when she had flu, with a dangerously high temperature, and did not want to go back to her family. At that time NH
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, p. xxix - xxxiii; various pages.
36
and whose friendship she relished. In a note to Bryher in 1924, she comments that several letters...
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
244
Friends, Associates
Bryher
Travelling from Switzerland, Bryher
arrived at 49 Lowndes Square, London , the home of her companion H. D.
The two lived there through the rest of the Second World War.
Bryher,. The Days of Mars. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
3
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
As editor, HSW
attempted to recruit Storm Jameson
for the paper, but Jameson unhappily could not accept a full-time position. She also began to acquaint herself with contributors, such as H. D.
, whom she...
The women critiqued and promoted each other's work, and in 1918 Lowell introduced Bryher to H. D.
's poetry.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press.
35-6, 219
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
116
Friends, Associates
Bryher
Bryher read and was highly enthusiastic about Marianne Moore
's poetry, which H. D.
had recommended to her. In 1921, following their meeting in the United States, Bryher arranged and paid for the publication...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW
and Bryher
were good friends who collaborated on publication projects (Marianne Moore
's Poems, H. D.
's Hymen, and others) and travelled together.
Lidderdale, Jane, and Mary Nicholson. Dear Miss Weaver. Viking.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
97
She was delighted with Thomas Hardy
, with whom she went cycling in Dorset in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ali Smith
The book's narrator is an unnamed, ungendered arborist in mourning for his or her unnamed, ungendered partner, a literary academic whose spectre lingers about the book both figuratively, in the form of unfinished lectures, and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Adrienne Rich
First published in 1971 (Rich's collections often include writings issued previously), the essay When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision is described in 1988 by Elizabeth Meese
as still inform[ing] much of the best work...
