Dorothy Wellesley

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Standard Name: Wellesley, Dorothy
Birth Name: Dorothy Violet Ashton
Styled: Lady Dorothy Violet Ashton
Pseudonym: M. A.
Married Name: Dorothy Violet Wellesley
Indexed Name: Lady Gerald Wellesley
Styled: Lady Dorothy Violet Wellesley
Titled: Dorothy Violet Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington
Nickname: Dottie
DW , writing in the earlier twentieth century, published a dozen volumes of poetry. She was also an editor of contemporary poetry, a letter-writer, critic, biographer and autobiographer. Her association first with the Hogarth Press and later with W. B. Yeats helped to give her a high profile. Her poetry typically looks back from the modern world, either to ancient history and prehistory, or to her own childhood. She voices a strong feeling for the natural world and a philosophic questioning about origins and principles.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Vita Sackville-West
She had erotic relationships also with the poet Dorothy Wellesley , with Pat (or Margaret) Dansey (who in 1922 said she would die or go abroad, leaving everything she owned to Vita), and with Margaret Goldsmith Voigt
Family and Intimate relationships Violet Trefusis
Violet Keppel (later VT ) became engaged for the first time—to Gerald Wellesley , heir to the title of Duke of Wellington (who was later married to the poet Dorothy Wellesley ).
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo, 1997.
109
Family and Intimate relationships W. B. Yeats
In his late seventies WBY began having a series of affairs, condoned and abetted by his wife, who would travel with him across the Irish Channel to Holyhead to see him off on a journey...
Family and Intimate relationships W. H. Auden
Nicholas Jenkins of Stanford University formerly maintained on his website at http://www.stanford.edu/~njenkins/ a section called W. H. Auden. Family Ghosts, designed to show how Auden's family, despite his claims to ordinariness, sprang from a...
Friends, Associates Ruth Pitter
RP knew T. S. Eliot well enough to enjoy a courtly encounter with him at a bus stop, but she felt his great innovations had not necessarily been a good thing for English poetry, and...
Occupation Edith Sitwell
It was well attended by women writers. Ivy Compton-Burnett and Bryher were there, and H. D. and Vita Sackville-West were among the other readers on the evening's programme. Dorothy Wellesley was to have read also...
Occupation John Keats
His few writing years produced, as well as the poems and letters for which he is famous, the groundwork for a career in letters in the form of magazine contributions. He is represented in The...
politics Bryher
H. D. , Edith Sitwell , Vita Sackville-West , Dorothy Wellesley , T. S. Eliot , and Walter de la Mare were among the readers at this event, which also received royal patronage.
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, 1999.
235 and n45
politics Edith Lyttelton
In November 1938, EL signed a brief but pointed letter to the editor of the Times condemning the persecution of the Jews in Germany. (Dorothy Wellesley and Ralph Vaughan Williams were also among...
Publishing Elspeth Huxley
EH published East Africa for Collins 's British Commonwealth in Pictures series, launched by Hilda Matheson and Dorothy Wellesley .
Nicholls, C. S. Elspeth Huxley. HarperCollins, 2002.
151
Textual Features Fleur Adcock
She relates how in reading for the anthology she made discoveries and underwent conversions—one result of which had to be the jettisoning of some early choices whose phantoms later, for her, haunted the volume...
Textual Features Stella Gibbons
SG 's biographer, Reggie Oliver , speculates that the lesbian writer figure, Dorothy Hoad, may be based on Dorothy Wellesley .
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
50-1
The lesbian love scenes sometimes parody Radclyffe Hall 's The Well of Loneliness.
Beauman, Nicola. A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39. Virago, 1983.
219
Oliver, Reggie. Out of the Woodshed: A Portrait of Stella Gibbons. Bloomsbury, 1998.
141
Textual Production Laura Riding
W. B. Yeats tried, rather late in the day, to get some of Riding's poems for The Oxford Book of Modern Verse. Their correspondence was fairly amicable
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
277ff
until he assured her that poets...
Textual Production Anne Ridler
Of the fourteen poets invited to read four were women: Edith Sitwell , Kathleen Raine , Dorothy Wellesley , and Ridler. Sitwell and T. S. Eliot sat on either side of the Chair of the evening, Desmond MacCarthy .
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, 2004, p. 240 pp.
141
Textual Production W. B. Yeats
WBY published The Oxford Book of Modern Verse: 1892-1935. His idiosyncratic selection included Alice Meynell , Ezra Pound , Edith Sitwell , Rabindranath Tagore , Sylvia Townsend Warner , and his friend Dorothy Wellesley .
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
280n27
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Timeline

By October 1926
The BBC named Hilda Matheson as its first Director of Talks, one of the most highly paid jobs for a woman in any organisation at that time,
Carney, Michael. Stoker. Published by the author, 1999.
23
as her biographer puts it.
1930
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant decorated the dining-room at Penns-in-the-Rocks, Withyham, Sussex, for Lady Gerald Wellesley (the poet Dorothy Wellesley).