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.
In July 1927 Bryher and Macpherson
founded Close Up magazine, dedicated to avant-garde film theories and practices.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press.
276
Both as editor and contributor, Bryher used Close Up as a forum to develop and share her...
Occupation
T. S. Eliot
TSE
became Assistant Editor of The Egoist (in succession nominally to Richard Aldington
, actually to Aldington's wife, H. D.
), a position he held until 1919.
Parker, Peter, editor. A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers. Oxford University Press.
216
Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Robert Johnson.
(June 1917): front page
Performance of text
Bryher
The POOL
collective produced four silent films, the best-known and most ambitious of which is Borderline (1930). Presenting a seemingly disjointed, obscure mix of racial and sexual conflicts, Borderline shows the influences of Pabst
,...
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, http://Rutherford HSS.
235 and n45
Publishing
Dora Marsden
Plans were afoot to relaunch The Freewoman shortly after it collapsed in its first form. When Marsden retreated to Southport for health reasons, Rebecca West
acted as liaison between her and supporters in the Freewoman Discussion Circle
Publishing
May Sinclair
MS
published a highly laudatory review, Two Notes, of H. D.
's poetry in The Egoist.
Boll, Theophilus E. M. Miss May Sinclair: Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
265
Publishing
May Sinclair
MS
's long article on H. D.
's development as a poet was printed in almost complete form in The Fortnightly Review; it had appeared five years earlier, much abridged, in the Dial.
Boll, Theophilus E. M. Miss May Sinclair: Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
308-9
Residence
Bryher
Inspired by the Bauhaus aesthetic of Berlin, Bryher
built Kenwin, her home near Montreux in the Vaud canton, Switzerland. She shared it for a time with Kenneth Macpherson
, H. D.
, and H. D.'s daughter Perdita
.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press.
44
Bryher,. The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs. Collins.
259
Residence
Bryher
Bryher
and H. D.
, along with H. D.'s daughter Perdita
, took the Riant Chateau, a pension in Territet, Switzerland, as their primary residence.
Hanscombe, Gillian, and Virginia L. Smyers. Writing for Their Lives: The Modernist Women, 1910-1940. Women’s Press.
41
Robinson, Janice S. H.D.: The Life and Work of an American Poet. Houghton Mifflin.
265
Textual Features
Dora Marsden
A marked difference separating The New Freewoman from its predecessor was its increased literary content, at first secured mainly by Rebecca West
. West recruited Ezra Pound
to The New Freewoman after meeting him at...
ES
praises Marianne Moore
as one of the very few women who have written poetry of worth.
British Book News. British Council.
(1951): 446
(She also, however, accords H. D.
the highest praise.)
Textual Features
Edith Sitwell
The English edition appeared the following year. Her choice for inclusion is, as usual, idiosyncratic. She begins well before Chaucer
, with anonymous early religious poems in which may be heard, she writes, the creaking...
Textual Production
T. S. Eliot
In June 1917 TSE
took over the post of literary editor at The Egoist from his fellow American expatriate the poet and critic H. D.
(though nominally from her then husband Richard Aldington
, who...
Textual Production
Bryher
Bryher also wrote publicly on H. D.
's work. After H. D.'s 1921 collection Hymen was pronounced deadening and monotonous
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, http://Rutherford HSS.
36
by the Times Literary Supplement, Bryher (who had helped publish the volume) praised...
