Dora Marsden

05 March 1882 - 13 December 1960

Standard Name: Marsden, Dora

Birth Name: Dora Marsden

Following a notorious suffrage career, DM founded, edited, and wrote for the highly influential journals The Freewoman, The New Freewoman, and The Egoist. She then wrote several books on the intersections among philosophy, religion, and science. Repeating the pattern of her lifetime, much of the critical attention accorded to Marsden in recent decades has focussed primarily on her early feminist activities and associations, rather than her pursuits in The Egoist or her monographs.

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Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Employer	Mary Gawthorpe	She then accepted Dora Marsden 's offer of a position as co-editor on The Freewoman, although she had turned down Marsden's first suggestion on the grounds that she wanted to finish [her] work in...
Friends, Associates	Storm Jameson	SJ moved in various creative circles as she began to write, review, and undertake other literary work. She first met Dora Marsden in 1913: Marsden was editor of the Egoist and Jameson wrote a number...
Friends, Associates	Mary Gawthorpe	MG 's friendship with Dora Marsden ended in a breach. With Sylvia Pankhurst , too, her relationship later came to grief, but this was after a particularly close period following the birth of Sylvia's son...
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...
Friends, Associates	Harriet Shaw Weaver	Her friendship with Dora Marsden remained constant until Marsden's mental health deteriorated. Marsden was one of the few people who knew and addressed HSW by her pseudonym, Josephine Wright. After Weaver closed down the...
Friends, Associates	Harriet Shaw Weaver	McAlmon hosted a dinner party which Weaver attended together with Djuna Barnes , William Bird , sculptor Thelma Wood , and Ezra Pound , who mortified her by teasing her, quite without justification, about her...
Intertextuality and Influence	Anna Wickham	Several poems in this collection are self-reflexive, taking poetic form itself as their subject. In The Egoist (a poem which shares its title with Dora Marsden 's journal The Egoist, associated with Pound and...
Literary responses	Ethel Mannin	Although controversial in its views on progressive education, the book received praise from critics. The 1000 Transcript wrote that it had common sense and a freshness of viewpoint . . . . Hers is the...
Occupation	Ezra Pound	Dora Marsden and Harriet Shaw Weaver took on EP as poetry editor for their journal The New Freewoman, whose first number came out on 19 June. Nadel, Ira Bruce, editor. “Chronology; Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1. xix
Occupation	Rebecca West	RW landed her first job as a journalist, as editor and writer for Dora Marsden 's feminist periodical, The Freewoman. Rollyson, Carl. Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century. Hodder and Stoughton, 1995. 17-18
Occupation	Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche	His attention to questions of power and representation helped spawn poststructuralist theory. His unregenerate misogyny—expressed in contempt for little bluestockings Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Michael Tanner. Twilight of the Idols; and, The Anti-Christ. Translator Holligdale, Reginald John, Penguin, 1990. 79 like George Eliot , for George Sand as a prolific writing-cow, Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Michael Tanner. Twilight of the Idols; and, The Anti-Christ. Translator Holligdale, Reginald John, Penguin, 1990. 80 and...
Occupation	Harriet Shaw Weaver	Dora Marsden , then the editor, and Rebecca West launched a much-needed subscription campaign in order to re-establish the journal on sound financial footing after it had run into trouble for publishing allegedly immoral contents....
Occupation	Harriet Shaw Weaver	Dora Marsden , the journal's founder-editor, was concentrating on writing her philosophical book and suggested in March 1914 that HSW should take over the job of editor. She eased Weaver into the position by introducing...
politics	Mary Gawthorpe	One of her many arrests (this one together with Dora Marsden and Rona Robinson ) came at Victoria University, Manchester , on 4 October 1909, when they faced the prospect of prison and force-feeding, though...
Author summary	Mary Gawthorpe	MG , from a working-class family with a tradition of self-education, became a remarkable speaker and writer on behalf of women's suffrage. She co-edited The Freewoman, working somewhat uneasily with Dora Marsden . Her...

Timeline

23 November 1911

Dora Marsden and Mary Gawthorpe edited the first issue of The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review, a paper about sexual reform.

Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.

Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800. Longman, 1981.

166

Harrison, Royden et al. The Warwick Guide to British Labour Periodicals, 1790-1970: A Check List. Harvester Press, 1977.

182

1937

Stella Browne testified before a parliamentary committee on abortion (which was then illegal), as a matter of public duty, about her knowledge in my own person that abortion was not necessarily fatal or injurious to...

Texts

Marsden, Dora. The Definition of the Godhead. Egoist, 1928.

Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Robert Johnson, 6 vols.

Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Reprint ed., Kraus, 6 vols.

Marsden, Dora, and Mary Gawthorpe, editors. The Freewoman. Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney.

Marsden, Dora. The Mysteries of Christianity. Egoist, 1930.

Marsden, Dora, editor. The New Freewoman. Printed by Hazell, Watson, and Viney.

Marsden, Dora. The Philosophy of Time. Holywell, 1955.