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.
May Sinclair
thought Madeleine magnificent, having depths & depths of passion & of sheer beauty.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
191
She also enjoyed the high Victorian melodrama of Mew's reading aloud.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
192
Despite her efforts to bring The Farmer's...
Textual Production
Marianne Moore
Twenty-four of MM
's Poems were selected, ostensibly without her knowledge, by H. D.
and Mr. and Mrs. Robert McAlmon (the latter being her friend Bryher
)
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
MM
allowed to be published Observations, which she called an American edition,
Moore, Marianne. The Selected Letters of Marianne Moore. Editors Costello, Bonnie et al., Knopf.
209
somewhat expanded, of the unauthorized Poems issued by H. D.
, Bryher
, and Robert McAlmon
in 1921.
Abbott, Craig S. Marianne Moore: A Descriptive Bibliography. University of Pittsburgh Press.
9
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.
3
then took her BA in 1908 at a women's college, Bryn Mawr
in Pennsylvania. She followed that with...
Friends, Associates
Marianne Moore
MM
corresponded with T. S. Eliot
from 1921 until the year before his death. She was a friend of H. D.
and of Bryher
, and her editors believe that every one of her five...
Textual Production
Marianne Moore
In the early 1920s MM
was already an influential New York reviewer, who covered such landmark texts as T. S. Eliot
's The Sacred Wood, 1921, Bryher
's first novel, Development, also in...
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...
Friends, Associates
Ezra Pound
While in London, EP
, together with H. D.
, became an Imagiste.
Nadel, Ira Bruce, editor. “Chronology; Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge University Press, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1.
xix
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...
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...
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
Textual Production
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)
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sappho
Following Michael Field
, many twentieth-century, lesbian-identified writers treat Sappho
as a crucial precursor. She became a figure for modernism with the work of HD
and Virginia Woolf
. The Lavender Nation
was named from...
