H.D. | |
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Born | Hilda Doolittle September 10, 1886 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, US |
Died | September 27, 1961 Zurich, Switzerland | (aged 75)
Occupation |
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Alma mater | Bryn Mawr College |
Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an early modernist poet and novelist, essayist, and memoirist who published under the pen name H.D.. She became known for her early sparse, minimalist, free verse works and association with the 1910s avant-garde Imagist group of poets she co-founded with the American expatriate poet and critic Ezra Pound and the writer and poet Richard Aldington, whom she married in 1913.
A native of Pennsylvania, Doolittle was born in Bethlehem to wealthy and educated parents, who relocated the family to Upper Darby in 1896. She met Pound in 1901, and attended attended Bryn Mawr College between 1904 and 1906. They developed a romantic relationship and were briefly engaged, much to the disapproval of her parents. She had her first lesbian relationship at college before moving to London in 1911. By this time Pound had already relocated to England, and championed her as an innovate poet. Between 1916 and 1917 she was associate literary editor of the Egoist journal, and was published by the English Review and Transatlantic Review. During World War I, she suffered the death of her brother and the breakup of her marriage to Aldington. She befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s as a patient looking to understand both her war trauma and bisexuality.[2]
During her five decade career, Dootlttle wrote in a wide range of genres and formats, yet became overly associated with Imagism and Pound, while her later, more complex work was neglected. Following a reappraisal by feminist critics in the 1970s and 1980s, she is today considered one of the foremost 20th-century Modernist poets. She was interested in Ancient Greek literature and published numerous translations, while her poetry ranges from the Imagism of her youth to the epic poems composed from the 1940s—of which the best known is "Helen in Egypt" (1952–1954)—, and often borrows from Greek mythology and classical poets. These work are noted for their incorporation of natural scenes and objects, often used to evoke a particular feeling or mood. She wrote several novels, the best known being "Hedylus" (1928), "Palimpsest" (1926) and "Bid Me to Live" (1960).
Career
Early life
Hilda Doolittle was born on September 10, 1886, into the Moravian community in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.[3] Her father, Charles, was professor of astronomy at Lehigh University[4] and her mother, Helen (nee Wolle), was a pianist with a strong interest in music, and a fanatical Moravian. Hilda was their only surviving daughter in a family of five sons, and Hilda always saw her mother as being subevent to Charles. In 1896, hes was appointed Flower Professor of Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania,[5] and they moved to the Highland Park neighborhood of Upper Darby. She attended Philadelphia's Friends' Central High School at Fifteenth and Race streets, graduating in 1905.[6]
She became friends with Ezra Pound as a teenager in 1901. He become a life-long friend and played a major role in her development as a writer. She enrolled at Bryn Mawr College in 1905[7] to study Greek literature. While there she met the poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams. In 1907, Pound gave her Hilda's Book, a hand-bound vellum binding of twenty-five of his earliest love poems, which he dedicated to her as a token of his affection.[8] After she told him that she felt insecure that both her first and second names sounded old-fashioned, he advised her to adopt the pseudonym H.D.
She left Bryn Mawr after three terms due to poor grades and she said, to a near nervous breakdown. After she studied at home until 1910.[9][10] Her first published writings consist of stories for children published between 1909 and 1913 in The Comrade, mostly under the name Edith Gray. She became engaged to Pound in 1907, to the strong objections of her parents,[10][7] but by the time Pound left for Europe in 1908 the engagement had been called off. H.D. started a relationship with a young female art student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Frances Josepha Gregg.[11] She began to write poetry in 1910 while in New York, where she published children's stories on astronomy in a Presbyterian paper.[5] In 1911, she travelled to Europe on holiday with Gregg and her mother, but ended up staying there in pursuit of a more serious career as a writer. Her relationship with Gregg cooled after she met and became romantically involved with Brigit Patmore, through whom she was introduced to Richard Aldington.[12]
H.D. Imagiste
Soon after her arrival in England, H.D. shared some of her poems with Pound, who had already begun to meet with other poets at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Soho. He was impressed by her awareness of the aspiration's for contemporary poetry and free verse which had been discussing with Aldington, with whom he had shared plans to reform through tanka and the brevity of haiku. In 1912, Pound, H.D and Aldington, the "three original Imagists", launched a three point manifesto aiming to 1. achieve direct treatment of the 'thing' whether subjective or objectiv, 2. use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation, 3. compose poetry in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of metronome.[13][14]
Japanese and Far East verse became early sources for the Imagists, and H.D. often visited the print room at the British Museum with Aldington and the curator and poet Laurence Binyon to view Nishiki-e prints and other examples of traditional Japanese verse.[15] Over time, as H.D.became a pre-eminent figure in the Imagist movement [16] she was weary that her good looks and sexuality were drawing undue attention and distracting from her work. During a 1912 meeting with Pound, she told him that she found her full name old fashioned and "quaint"; he suggested the signature H.D. Imagiste, an abbreviation she kept for the remainder of her career.[17][18]
Also in 2012, Pound submitted three poems each by H.D. and Aldington under the rubric Imagiste. Her poems "Hermes of the Ways", "Orchard" and "Epigram" were published in January 1913 in Poetry's second issue.[19][20] These early poems are informed by her reading of Classical Greek literature, especially of Sappho,[21] an interest she shared with Aldington and Pound, each of whom produced versions of the Greek poet's work. In 1915, H.D. and Aldington launched the Poets' Translation Series, pamphlets based on Greek and Latin classics.[22] She worked on the plays by Euripides, publishing in 1916 a translation of choruses from Iphigeneia at Aulis, in 1919 a translation of choruses from Iphigeneia at Aulis and Hippolytus, an adaptation of Hippolytus called Hippolytus Temporizes (1927), a translation of choruses from The Bacchae and Hecuba (1931), and Euripides' Ion (1937) a loose translation of Ion.[23]
She maintained her association with the group until the last issue of the Some Imagist Poets anthology in 1917. Her work later appeared in Aldington's Imagist Anthology 1930. All of her poetry to the end of the 1930s was written in an Imagist mode, utilising sparcity of language[24] and a classical, austere purity.[25] This style as not without its critics. In a special Imagist issue of The Egoist magazine in May 1915, the poet and critic Harold Monro called H.D.'s early work "petty poetry", denoting "either poverty of imagination or needlessly excessive restraint".[26] One of her earliest and best-known poems, "Oread" (1915), illustrates this early style:[27]
Whirl up, sea—
Whirl your pointed pines.
Splash your great pines
On our rocks.
Hurl your green over us—
Cover us with your pools of fir.
World War I and after
H.D. married Aldington in 1913 with her parents and Ezra Pound as witnesses, the following year Pound married Dorothy Shakespear.[28][18] Her and Aldington's only child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1915. Aldington enlisted in the army, after which they became estranged: he reportedly took a mistress in 1917 and she became involved in a close but platonic relationship with D. H. Lawrence.[29] Her first book, Sea Garden, was published in 1916, and she was appointed assistant editor of The Egoist, substituting for her husband from June 1916 as he joined the army.[30] In 1918, her brother Gilbert was killed in action. That March she moved to a cottage in Cornwall with the composer Cecil Gray, a friend of Lawrence. She became pregnant with Gray's child;[31] however, by the time she realised she was expecting, the relationship had cooled and Gray had returned to live in London.[32]
She met the wealthy female English novelist Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) in Cornwall in July 1918.[33] They lived together until 1946 and although both took numerous other partners, Bryher remained her lover for the rest of her life. In 1919, H.D. came close to death during the birth of her daughter Frances Perdita Aldington—fathered by Gray while suffering from war influenza.[34] During this time, her father died, having never recovered from Gilbert's death.[9] In 1919, H.D. wrote one of her few known statements on poetics,[35] Notes on Thought and Vision, which was unpublished until 1982.[36] In this, she speaks of poets (herself included) as belonging to a kind of elite group of visionaries with the power to "turn the whole tide of human thought".
H.D. and Aldington attempted to salvage their relationship, but in part as he was suffering from the effects of his participation in the war (possibly post-traumatic stress disorder) they became estranged, and lived completely separate lives, but did not divorce until 1938. Aldington became one of her main inspirations for her 1960 novel Bid me to live.[37]
From 1920, she grew closer with Bryher, and they travelled to the island Lesbos in Greece, and in 1923 to Egypt where they attended the opening of Tutankamuns tomb before settling in Switzerland that year.[9] Bryher entered a marriage of convenience in 1921 with Robert McAlmon, which allowed him to fund his publishing ventures in Paris by using some of her personal wealth for his Contact Press.[38] Both Bryher and H.D. slept with McAlmon during this time. The couple divorced in 1927.[39]
Novels and psychoanalysis
H.D. began three cycles of novels in the early 1920s.[40] The first, Magna Graeca, began with Palimpsest (1921), followed by Hedylus (1928) which uses classical settings to explore the role of a poet, particularly examining a female poet's value in the then patriarchal literary culture. Her later poetry cycles, HERmione, Bid Me to Live, Paint It Today and Asphodel are largely autobiographical and preoccupied with the development of the female artist and the conflict between heterosexual and lesbian desire. The novellas Kora and Ka and The Usual Star from the Borderline cycle were published in 1933. In this period, she also wrote Pilate's Wife, Mira-Mare and Nights.[40] At around the same time, her mother died and Bryher divorced her husband to marry H.D.'s male lover, Kenneth Macpherson. H.D., Bryher and Macpherson lived together and traveled through Europe in what the poet and critic Barbara Guest termed as a "menagerie of three".[41] Bryher and Macpherson adopted H.D.'s daughter, Perdita.[3] They moved to Lake Geneva to live in a Bauhaus villa.[42] She became pregnant for the third time in 1928, but chose to illegally abort the pregnancy in Berlin that November.[43]
Bryher and Macpherson founded the magazine Close Up[9] as a medium for intellectual discussion of cinema. In 1927, the small independent film cinema group POOL or Pool Group was established (largely funded with Bryher's inheritance) and was managed by all three.[44] In the 1930 POOL film Borderline, the actors were H.D. and Bryher and the couple Paul and Eslanda Robeson, the latter acting as wife and husband.[45] The film explores extreme psychic states, racism and interracial relationship.[46] As well as acting in this film, H.D. wrote an explanatory pamphlet to accompany it, which was later published in Close Up.[47]
Having begun a psychoanalysis in 1928 with the Freudian Hanns Sachs,[9] she traveled to Vienna in 1933 to undergo analysis with Sigmund Freud.[48] She had an interest in Freud's theories as far back as 1909 when she read some of his works in the original German.[49] She was referred by Bryher's psychoanalyst due to her apparent paranoia about the rise of Adolf Hitler. The First World War had left her feeling shattered: she had lost her brother in action, her husband suffered effects of combat, and she believed that its onslaught indirectly caused the death of her child with Aldington, and she believed that her shock at hearing the news about the RMS Lusitania directly caused her child to be stillborn.[50] On Freud's request she wrote Bid me to Live (published 1960), in which she details her traumatic experiences during World War I.[51] Writing on the Wall, an impressionistic memoir of her sessions with him and a reevaluation of the importance of his psychoanalysis, was written concurrently with Trilogy and published in 1944; in 1956 it was republished with Advent, a journal of the analysis, under the title Tribute to Freud.[52]
World War II and after
H.D. and Bryher spent World War II in London, during which her daughter Perdita beccame a secretary of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).[42] Between 1941 and 1943 H.D. wrote The Gift, a memoir of her childhood and family life in Bethlehem, that reflects on people and events in her early life that shaped her as a writer.[53] Her Trilogy series was published as the long and complex poems The Walls do not Fall (1944), Tribute to the Angels (1945) and The Flowering of the Rod (1946). The first book was written while she lived in London through the Blitz and detail her reactions to the Second World War, while the following two books compare the bombed out landscape of London of to the ruins of ancient Egypt and classical Greece; the former of which she had seen during a 1923 visit to Egypt.[54] The opening lines of The Walls do not Fall clearly and immediately signal H.D.'s break with her earlier work:
An incident here and there,
and rails gone (for guns)
from your (and my) old town square.[55]
After the war, H.D. and Bryher ended their relationship but remained in contact. She moved to Switzerland where she had a severe mental breakdown in the spring of 1946 and took refuge in a clinic until the autumn of that year. Apart from a number of visits to the United States, she spent the rest of her life in Switzerland.[5] In the late 1950s, she underwent further treatment, this time with the psychoanalyst Erich Heydt.[56] Encouraged by Heydt, she wrote End to Torment, a memoir of her relationship with Pound.[7]
Late work
Her long-form epic poem Helen in Egypt (1952–1954) was written her while she was in her 60's. Based on the life of Helen of Troy, it is post Homeritic in that it imagines Helen's life after Troy, after she had located to Egypt.[57] It's foundation is based on Euripides' play Helen, which she develops into a Feminist reinterpretation of the Trojan War.[58] The poem's format and wide historical span is often viewed as a response to Pound's Cantos, which she admired and referred to as "her own cantos".[58]
A collection of her late poems were published posthumously in 1972 under the collective title Hermetic Definition. The collection takes as its starting points her love for a man 30 years her junior and the line 'so slow is the rose to open' from Pound's Canto 106. Sagesse, which she wrote in bed having broken her hip in a fall, serves as a kind of coda to Trilogy, being partly written in the voice of a young female Blitz survivor who finds herself living in fear of the atom bomb.[59] Winter Love was written during the same period as End to Torment and uses as narrator the Homeric figure of Penelope to restate the material of the memoir in poetic form. At one time, H.D. considered appending this poem as a coda to Helen in Egypt.[60][61]
She returned to the United States in 1960 to collect an American Academy of Arts and Letters medal, becoming the first woman to be granted the award.[62]
Death
H.D suffered a stroke that July, leaving her gravely ill. She died a of a heart attack on September 27 1961 at the Klinik Hirslanden in Zürich.[63] Her ashes were brought to Bethlehem where they were buried in the family plot in the Nisky Hill Cemetery on October 28 1961. Her headstone is inscribed with lines from her early poem "Epitaph":
So you may say,
Greek flower; Greek ecstasy
reclaims forever
one who died
following intricate song's
lost measure.[64]
Appraisal
During her long career, H.D. produced a large number of works in a variety of styles and formats, evolving from the lyrics written as a teenager (such as Sea Gardens), through her early period Imagist poems and free verse, to her longer and more complex "epic" poems of which the more important include her "Trilogy" (1944–1946), "Helen in Egypt" (1961),[65] and the three-volume Hermetic Definition. Yet, during her lifetime, these later poems, novels or her numerous translations of classical works were rarely studied or taught, and only early poems such as "Oread" or "Heat" appeared in anthologies. For decades her reputation was stuck as an Imagist who peaked in the 1920s; a consignment the literary critic Susan Friedman believes placed H.D. as "a captive and in prison."[61] In 1972 Hugh Kenner wrote that assigning her as just an imagist poet was similar to evaluating "five of the shortest pieces in Harmonium [as equal to] the life's work of Wallace Stevens".[52] In fact, although Pound claimed in the 1930s that he formed the Imagist movement "to launch H.D. and Aldington before either had enough stuff for a volume" and was chiefly motivated to get H.D.'s poems "a hearing without it being necessary for her to publish a whole book", many the foundational poets within the group, including Amy Lowell, viewed H.D. as the main focal point and innovator in achieving "a revolution in taste".[66][67]
H.D. was aware early on that the strictures of Imagism would limit and constrain her creative voice, and by the mid 1920s was attempting to break "beyond Imagism".[68] She further realised that her striking looks and role as a muse for established male writers would negatively impact both her public image and standing as a poet in her own right. She raised this fact in her 1927 autobiographical novel "HER", a factor later highlighted by several critics and biographers. The writer Sarah Parker described H.D.'s position as falling within the "classic dilemma for woman: the necessity to choose between being a muse for another and being an artist oneself".[69] Although Pound was a lifelong champion, a number of other early Imagists attempted to downplay her importance and consign her to a minor role.[18] Similarly, her mid-period poems and writings display similar explorations of mysticism, esotericism and the occult, to poets such as W.B. Yeats, whom she was personally acquainted with, she was rarely mentioned in contemporary surveys.[70]
Her reappraisal began in the 1970s and 1980s, and coincided with the emergence of a feminist and later, LGBT, criticism movement that found much to admire in the questioning of gender roles typical of her writings.[71] Specifically, critics such as Friedman (1981), Janice Robertson (1982) and Rachel DuPlessis (1986) began to challenge the standard view of English-language literary modernism as based on only the work of male writers, and gradually restored H.D. to a more significant position in the movement.[52][18]
Legacy
Her writings have served as a model for a number of more recent women poets working in the modernist and post-modernist traditions, including the New York School poet Barbara Guest, the Anglo-American poet Denise Levertov, the Black Mountain poet Hilda Morley and the Language poet Susan Howe.[72] Her influence is not limited to female poets, and many male writers, including Robert Duncan[73] and Robert Creeley,[74] have acknowledged their debt. The Dutch poet H.C. ten Berge wrote his 2008 'Het vertrapte mysterie' in memory of H.D..[75]
Selected works
Poetry
- Oread (1915)
- Heath (1915)
- Sea Garden (1916)
- The God (1917)
- Choruses from the Iphigeneia in Aulis and The Hippollytus of Euripides (1919)
- Translations (1920)
- Hymen (1921)
- Heliodora and Other Poems (1924)
- Hippolytus Temporizes (1927)
- Red Roses for Bronze (1931)
- "The Mysteries: Renaissance Choros" (1931)
- Euripides' Ion (1937)
- Trilogy (1944-1946)[54]
- "The Walls Do Not Fall" (1944)
- "Tribute to the Angels" (1945)
- "The Flowering of the Rod" (1946)
- Vale Ave (1957–58)[76]
- Helen in Egypt (1961)
- Hermetic Definition (1972)[77]
- "Hermetic Definition"
- "Sagesse"
- "Winter Love"
Novels
- Notes on Thought and Vision (1919)
- Paint it Today (1921)
- Asphodel (1921–22)
- Palimpsest (1926)
- Kora and Ka (1930)
- Nights (1935)
- The Hedgehog (1936)
- Majic Ring (1943–44)
- Pilate's Wife (1929–1934)
- The Sword Went Out to Sea (1946––47)
- White Rose and the Red (1948)
- The Mystery (1948–51)
- Tribute to Freud (1956)
- Bid Me to Live (1960)
- End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound, (1979)
- HERmione, (posthumously 1981)
- The Gift, (posthumously 1982)
Notes
- ^ "Hilda Doolittle". npg.si.edu. Retrieved January 14, 2020.
- ^ Bertram (1997), p. 39
- ^ a b Scott, Bonnie Kime. "The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States". Oxford University Press, 1995.
- ^ Champion; Nelson. (2000), p. 87
- ^ a b c Dembo (1969), pp. 435–347
- ^ Friedman (1991), p. 32
- ^ a b c King (1981), p. 348
- ^ King (1981), p. 347
- ^ a b c d e Johnson Lewis, Jone (June 5, 2021). "Biography of Hilda Doolittle, Poet, Translator, and Memoirist". ThoughtCo. Retrieved March 7, 2022.
- ^ a b Barnstone (1998), p. 78
- ^ "Doolittle, Hilda (1886–1961) Archived June 27, 2015, at the Wayback Machine". New England Publishing Associates. Retrieved on October 5, 2007.
- ^ Hollenberg (1983), p. 36
- ^ Hatlen (1995), p. 107–130
- ^ Elder (1998), pp. 72, 94
- ^ Arrowsmith (2011), pp. 103–164
- ^ Hatlen (1995), pp. 109–110
- ^ Doolittle (1979), p. 18
- ^ a b c d Barnstone (1998), p. 79
- ^ Korg (1950), p. 31
- ^ Friedman (1991), p. 87
- ^ Keeling, Bret L. "H.D. and 'The Contest': Archaeology of a Sapphic gaze Archived February 16, 2016, at the Wayback Machine". Twentieth Century Literature (Summer 1998). Retrieved on October 6, 2007.
- ^ Barnstone (1998), p. 203
- ^ H.D. (2004). "Introduction". Hippolytus Temporizes & Ion: Adaptations of Two Plays by Euripides. Introduction by Camper, Carol. New Directions. pp. xi. ISBN 978-0-8112-1553-4.
- ^ Marshall; Johnston, Cristin (2005), p. 560
- ^ Ward (2007), p. 241
- ^ Levenson (1986), p. 162
- ^ Gilbert (1979), p. 157
- ^ Pearson, Norman Holmes; Dembo, L. S. (1969) p. 437
- ^ Firchow (1980), pp. 51–76
- ^ Friedman (1991), p. 35
- ^ Champion; Sampath (2000), p. 88
- ^ Korg (2003), p. 50
- ^ Parker (2014), pp. 131–160
- ^ Friedman (1990), p. 9
- ^ Blau DuPlessis (1986), p. 40
- ^ Laity (1996), p. 80
- ^ Kelvin (2000), p. 185
- ^ Caserio (2004), pp. 400–402
- ^ Freud; H.D.; Friedman (2002), p. 568
- ^ a b Friedman (1992), pp. 839–40
- ^ Kakutani, Michiko. "Herself Defined. The Poet H. D. and Her World". Book review, New York Times, January 4, 1984. Retrieved 25 June 2022.
- ^ a b "Perdita Macpherson Schaffner (1919-2001)". www.imagists.org. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ^ Freud; H.D.; Friedman (2002), p. 567
- ^ Connor (2004), p. 19
- ^ Walton (1997), p. 88
- ^ Walton (1997), pp. 89–90
- ^ Mandel (1980), pp. 127–35.
- ^ Billington, James H. "The Individual: Therapy and Theory Archived April 26, 2016, at the Wayback Machine." Library of Congress. Retrieved on October 7, 2007.
- ^ McCabe (2015), p. 33
- ^ Willis (2007), pp. 81–108
- ^ Chisholm (1990), p. 96
- ^ a b c Freedman (1975), p. 801
- ^ Mandel, Charlotte "H.D.'s The Gift Archived May 11, 2015, at the Wayback Machine". English Literature in Transition 1880–1920. September 1999. 344–48. Retrieved on October 6, 2007.
- ^ a b "The Walls Do Not Fall by H.D.". British Museum. Retrieved 25 June 2022
- ^ Anthology. "Sagetrieb." University of Michigan, 2008. 49.
- ^ Friedman (1987), p. 20
- ^ Glaser (2005), p. 91
- ^ a b Twitchell-Waas (1998), pp. 464–483
- ^ De Roche (2021), p. 312
- ^ Sword, Helen. "H.D.'s Majic Ring". Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 14, No. 2, Autumn 1995. 347–62
- ^ a b Friedman (1975), p. 808
- ^ Beate, Lohser; Newton, Peter M. Unorthodox Freud: The View from the Couch. New York: Guilford Press, 1996. p. 40. ISBN 1-57230-128-7
- ^ "Hilda Doolittle, Poet, Dead at 75. Imagist Who Signed Works H.D. Wrote Novel in 1960 Archived August 23, 2013, at the Wayback Machine". New York Times September 29, 1961. Retrieved on November 23, 2008.
- ^ Lohr Martz, (1983), p. 299
- ^ Friedman (1991), p. xi
- ^ Engel (1969), p. 507
- ^ Hatlen (1995), p. 108
- ^ Hatlen (1995), pp. 108–110
- ^ "H.D. and Bryher". Cambridge University. Retrieved 25 June 2022
- ^ Freedman (1975), p. 802
- ^ Ramsay, Tamara Ann (1998). Discursive departures: A reading paradigm affiliated with feminist, lesbian, aesthetic and queer practices (with reference to Woolf, Stein and H.D.) Archived May 29, 2016, at the Wayback Machine (M.A. thesis) Wilfrid Laurier University
- ^ Clippinger, David. "Resurrecting the Ghost: H.D., Susan Howe, and the Haven of Poetry Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine". Retrieved on October 7, 2007.
- ^ Keenaghan (2005), pp. 57–90
- ^ Wagner (1983), pp. 103–4
- ^ "Meester van de variatie". De Reactor (in Dutch). Retrieved June 21, 2022.
- ^ Freedman (1975), pp. 801–814
- ^ Quinne (1977), p. 51
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- Friedman, Susan. "Who Buried H. D.? A Poet, Her Critics, and Her Place in 'The Literary Tradition'". 'College English, volume 36, No. 7, March 1975. JSTOR 375177
- Gilbert, Sandra; Gubar, Susan. "Shakespeare's Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets". Indiana University Press, 1979. ISBN 978-0-2532-0263-5
- Guest, Barbara. Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World. Collins, 1985. ISBN 0-385-13129-1
- Jones, Peter (ed.). Imagist Poetry. London: Penguin, 1972. ISBN 978-0-1411-8570-5
- Keenaghan, Eric. "Vulnerable Households: Cold War Containment and Robert Duncan's Queered Nation". Journal of Modern Literature, 28, number 4, Summer 2005
- Kelvin, Norman. H.D. and the Years of World War I. Victorian Poetry, volume 38, issue 1, 2000. JSTOR 40004298
- King. Michael. "Go, little book: Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle and 'Hilda's Book'". Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, volume 10, No. 2, Fall 1981. JSTOR 24725256
- Korg, Jacob. Winter Love: Ezra Pound and H.D.. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-2991-8390-5
- Harrell, Sarah Grace. H.D.'s incantations: Reading "Trilogy" as an occultist's creed. M.A. diss. The University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2010. AAT 1488037
- Hatlen, Burton. "The Imagist Poetics of H.D.'s Sea Garden". Paideuma, volume 24, issue 3, 1995. JSTOR 24726520
- Hollenberg, Donna Krolik. 'Winged Words: The Life and Work of the Poet H.D.. University of Michigan Press, 1983. ISBN 978-0-472-22006-9
- Hughes, Gertrude Reif. "Making it Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry". American Quarterly, Volume 42, No. 3, September 1990
- Laity, Cassandra. "H.D. and the Victorian Fin de Siècle". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 0-521-55414-4
- Levenson, Michael. "A Genealogy of Modernism: A Study of English Literary Doctrine 1908–1922". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-521-33800-X
- Lohr Martz, Louis. Collected Poems 1912–1944, By H. D. (Hilda Doolittle). New York: New Directions, 1983. ISBN 0-8112-0876-1
- Mandel, Charlotte. "Garbo/Helen: The self-projection of beauty by H.D.". Women's Studies 7, 1980
- Marshall, Bill & Johnston, Cristina. "France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History." ABC-CLIO, 2005. ISBN 978-1-8510-9411-0
- McCabe, Susan. "Cinematic Modernism: Modernist Poetry and Film." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-5218-4621-9
- Morris, Adalaide. How to Live / What to Do: H.D.'s Cultural Poetics. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-2520-7591-9
- Parker, Sarah (ed). "The Lesbian Muse and Poetic Identity, 1889–1930". London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014. ISBN 978-1-84893-386-6
- Quinn, Vincent. "H. D.'s "Hermetic Definition": The Poet as Archetypal Mother". Contemporary Literature, volume 18, number 1, Winter, 1977. JSTOR 1207850
- Taylor, Georgina. H.D. and the public sphere of modernist women writers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001
- Twitchell-Waas, Jeffrey. "H.D.'s 'Helen in Egypt' as a response to Pound's 'Cantos'". Twentieth Century Literature, volume 44, number 4, Winter 1998. JSTOR 441594
- Wagner, Linda. "The Lost America of Love: Rereading Robert Creeley, Edward Dorn, and Robert Duncan." South Atlantic Review. 48.2, 1983
- Walton, Jean. "Nightmare of the Uncoordinated White-Folk: Race, Psychoanalysis, and Borderline". Discourse, volume 19, issue 2, 1997. JSTOR 41389446
- Ward, Alfred Charles. "Longman Companion to Twentieth Century Literature." University of Michigan, 2007. ASIN: B000RY1UE4
- Willis, Elizabeth. "A Public History of the Dividing Line: H.D., the Bomb, and the Roots of the Postmodern". Arizona Quarterly, volume 63, number 1, Spring 2007
External links
- H.D. Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
- Numerous archival resources are listed on ArchiveGrid.
- Works by H.D. at Project Gutenberg
- Works by H.D. at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- H.D. at Modern American Poetry
- May Sinclair on H.D. in The Fortnightly Review, 1927