Dorothy M Richardson deserves the recognition she is finally receiving

Richardson’s modernist masterpiece Pointed Roofs earned her a place alongside Woolf, Joyce and Proust. As a plaque is unveiled in her honour 100 years later, the celebrations seem long overdue

A hundred years ago, Gerald Duckworth’s publishing company brought out a little book by an unknown writer about a student teacher in Germany. It was called Pointed Roofs, and its author was Dorothy M Richardson.

The story was narrated entirely through the consciousness of the heroine, Miriam Henderson, and readers and critics alike were both bewildered and excited. A reviewer in the Manchester Guardian, for example, although sure that the novel was “almost startlingly original”, could not pin down why, concluding rather helplessly: “It is a novel that no sensitive reader will forget. Its charm cannot be communicated.”

Related: May Sinclair: the readable modernist

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