H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
1886-1961
Best known for her poetry which is part of the Imagist and Modernist movements, H.D. also wrote essays and an autobiography as well as completing many translations from original Greek texts. She was a self-proclaimed “mystic” and underwent analysis with Sigmund Freud partly as a way to explore and understand the bisexuality that shaped her life and informed her writing.
Major works
- Sea Garden (1916)
- Ion, Translated With Notes (1920)
- HERmione (written in 1927, published posthumously in 1981)
- Paint It Today (written in the 1920s, published posthumously in 1992)
- Asphodel (written in the 1920s, published posthumously in 1992)
- Helen in Egypt (1961)
Known associates
- Richard Aldington (Married for a time)
- Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) (Partner in later life)
- Frances Josepha Gregg
- D.H. Lawrence
- Marianne Moore
- Ezra Pound (they were engaged at one point)
- May Sinclair
- William Carlos Williams
Further reading
- H.D.: HERmione (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1981).
- This autobiographical novel written by H.D. herself chronicles her experiences, social and otherwise, at Bryn Mawr. It was written in 1927 but not published until after her death in 1981.
- The American H.D. (Annette Debo, University of Iowa Press, 2012)
- This book covers H.D.’s life and work and how they shaped and were shaped by American culture. It is available online from Project Muse.
- Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World (Barbara Guest, Doubleday, 1984).
- Available at the Hatcher Graduate Library, this book provides a good overview of H.D.’s life in a biographical sense but does not offer much literary criticism.
Primary sources
- The Yale Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library has a collection of H.D.’s papers. Some of the collection is available online: here is a gallery of digital images. You can search within this selection or narrow the search parameters using the filters in the righthand box.
Recording of H.D. reading from Helen in Egypt. Audio file from the University of Pennsylvania’s PennSound project: a guide to the recording (with page numbers to help you follow along with the reading) is available here.
Modernista Research Guide 