Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Bryher
-
Standard Name: Bryher
Birth Name: Annie Winifred Ellerman
Self-constructed Name: Bryher
Indexed Name: A. W. Ellerman
Indexed Name: Winifred Bryher
Indexed Name: W. Bryher
Nickname: Dolly
Nickname: Boy
In considering the paucity of credit given to Bryher for her patronage of the influential Contact Press
, critic Jayne Marek
describes her as an invisible woman.
Marek, Jayne E. Women Editing Modernism: "Little" Magazines & Literary History. University Press of Kentucky.
116
Bryher is even less recognized as a writer than a patron: most of her texts are now out of print and have received little critical attention. Her novels, poems, memoirs, and criticism, together spanning much of the twentieth century, form a significant contribution to the development of Anglo-American modernism, particularly through their French and Imagist influences, and their explorations of topics including women's education, gender mutability, psychoanalysis, and film technology.
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)
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...
Literary responses
Violet Hunt
VH
's biography was warmly received both formally and informally. H. D.
(Hilda Doolittle
) wrote to Hunt from Switzerland on 30 September 1932, imagining [h]ow happy the book must make you! The style...
Family and Intimate relationships
H. D.
It is now generally accepted among HD's biographers and critics that Cecil Gray
had fathered the child. HD informed her Richard Aldington
, her husband, of her pregnancy while he was still on active duty...
The father this time was Bryher
's second husband, Kenneth Macpherson
, with whom HD had been having an affair since 1926, and whom, some months before this event, she had allowed to adopt her...
Occupation
H. D.
HD's film writing of the 1930s went along with the actual making of films. Together with Bryher
, she helped to set up Pool Films or POOL
, whose productions included Wingbeat, Foothills...
Friends, Associates
H. D.
HD's estrangement from Pound
continued for years after the end of the Second World War. Then, despite the disapproval of friends such as Bryher
and Sylvia Beach
, she renewed contact with him in 1960...
Health
H. D.
Not long after this, at the urging of Bryher
, she met with therapist Hanns Sachs
for psychoanalysis in Berlin. Bryher had also undergone psychoanalysis with Sachs. He diagnosed HD as having a mother...
Family and Intimate relationships
H. D.
The couple had been estranged since 1918, and separated since April 1919. The idea of divorce had first been mentioned in 1927, when Aldington hoped to marry Brigit Patmore
, but had been quickly dropped...
