Dora Marsden

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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.
Black and white photograph of Dora Marsden, shown from the shoulders up, with her body turned away from the camera and her face turned to face the viewer. She is wearing a light high-necked dress, with a dark collar. Her hair is dark and pulled into a bun on either side of her head.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Violence Mary Gawthorpe
MG , who was involved with Dora Marsden in impeding Winston Churchill 's election rallies in Southport, received grave internal injuries when she was struck by one of the stewards.
Holton, Sandra Stanley. Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Routledge.
149
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...
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...
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 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...
Textual Production Mary Gawthorpe
MG 's name appeared as co-editor (after somewhat fraught negotiations with Dora Marsden ) on The Freewoman, whose first issue appeared on 23 November 1911.
Textual Features H. D.
This issue opened with an editorial by Dora Marsden . It contained poetry by Aldington, HD, F. S. Flint , D. H. Lawrence , Marianne Moore , and May Sinclair and prose articles giving the...
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...
Publishing James Joyce
The Egoist serialised JJ 's autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: the serialisation began during the brief editorship of Dora Marsden .
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Parker, Alan. James Joyce: A Bibliography of His Writings, Critical Material, and Miscellanea. F. W. Faxon.
29
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...
Publishing Charlotte Mew
CM published a poem, The Fête, in Dora Marsden 's The Egoist.
This is not the same poem as Fin de Fête.
Warner, Val. “New Light on Charlotte Mew”. PN Review, Vol.
24
, No. 1, pp. 43-7.
46
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research.
310
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.
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.
80
and...
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, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1.
xix
Residence Harriet Shaw Weaver
From August 1923 to 1931, HSW rented accommodation next door to Dora Marsden 's converted cottage named Seldom Seen, at Glenridding in Westmorland. HSW lived there for more than six months each year, doing...
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...

Timeline

23 November 1911: Dora Marsden and Mary Gawthorpe edited the...

Building item

23 November 1911

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

1937: Stella Browne testified before a parliamentary...

Building item

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.
Marsden, Dora, and Harriet Shaw Weaver, editors. The Egoist. Kraus.
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.