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.
"H. D." by Bettmann/Contributor,Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/hilda-doolittle-was-a-literary-poet-and-exponent-of-imagism-news-photo/515359940.
Desmond MacCarthy
had launched Life and Letters in June 1928; it issued its last number this month, and Bryher's new publication first appeared in September. It merged it with the London Mercury after May 1939...
Textual Production
Anne Carson
AC
's The Albertine Workout was published as New Directions Poetry Pamphlet no. 13 (in a series whose no. 7 was H. D.
's Vale Ave).
Assistant editors were Richard Aldington
and Leonard Compton-Rickett
, and later H. D.
(when Aldington went to war in June 1916) and T. S. Eliot
(from July 1917). Contributors of creative work and critical reviews...
Textual Production
T. S. Eliot
In June 1917 TSE
took over the post of literary editor at The Egoist from his fellow American expatriate the poet and critic H. D.
(though nominally from her then husband Richard Aldington
, who...
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
)
qtd. in
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, 1990.
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, 1997.
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, 1977.
9
Textual Production
Bryher
Bryher also wrote publicly on H. D.
's work. After H. D.'s 1921 collection Hymen was pronounced deadening and monotonous
qtd. in
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, 1999, http://Rutherford HSS.
36
by the Times Literary Supplement, Bryher (who had helped publish the volume) praised...
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)
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...
Travel
Bryher
In the spring of 1920, Bryher and H. D.
began an extended holiday in Greece and Crete. They were accompanied by sexologist Havelock Ellis
, with whom they had first associated in 1918.
Collecott, Diana. H.D. and Sapphic Modernism, 1910-1950. Cambridge University Press, 1999, http://Rutherford HSS.
67, 186, 283
Travel
Bryher
In September 1920, Bryher's desire to meet American poets and see the liberating New World took her, H. D.
, and H. D.'s daughter
to the United States. Bryher met H. D.'s associate Marianne Moore
Travel
Bryher
Bryher
and H. D.
holidayed on the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall, where each came to a significant understanding about her respective writing.
Quartermain, Peter, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 45. Gale Research, 1986.
128
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, 1977.
157-8
Wealth and Poverty
Bryher
Bryher soon provided Richardson (as she did H. D.
) with a trust fund that yielded £250 a year.
Quartermain, Peter, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 45. Gale Research, 1986.
