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Dorothy Richardson: A Biography
The search for being that so absorbed the English novelist Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957) and fed her literary inventiveness is at the heart of this biography, originally published in 1977. The book traces the development of "Pilgrimage", including details of how and why it was begun, and the extent to which Richardson's life and art interacted as the novel progressed through its 13 volumes. Drawing on a variety of unpublished material, Gloria G. Fromm analyzes Richardson, the historical person, vis a vis Miriam Henderson, the character created and developed in "Pilgrimage". Among the topics to which Fromm pays particular attention are the conflict between Richardson's masculine and feminine roles, her unusual marital arrangement with the artist Allan Odle, her affair with H.G. Wells, and her relationship to such contemporaries as Marcel Proust and James Joyce.
451 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 20, 2015
This is the Biog to read, if you are interested – the others out there are flawed in terms of their approach and use of the sources. It does everything you want from such a text – is well written, covers all the important bases etc.
Usually, when reading a biography of a writer whose work I have fallen in love with, there are moments of disappointment – they will turn out to have been a racist, or a complete asshat, or done something else to make them fall lower in my estimation. Thankfully DR's life and work have done the precise opposite. From her refusal to be turned aside from her literary project by the great weight of patriarchal, capitalist society – the pressures of low sales, of wilful miss-representation of her work – to her engagement with and concern for the Jewish population in Europe in the 30s, my adoration has simply increased.
Her life story is a sad read, unsurprisingly. One can only imagine the great works we would be lucky to have had she been properly supported by the establishment. Hers was that impossible world of the impoverished, experimental writer – one would get an advance from a publisher to provide money to live on whilst writing a book and then, following low sales (often due to poor promotion) one would be in debt to the publisher with no income forthcoming and no mental or physical space to continue writing. Bryher tried to help, of course, but it was never enough. The odd bit of translation work or article writing helped too but, fundamentally, how can anyone focus on writing with all those problems surrounding them?
When one adds the traumas of her life - her mother slitting her own throat with a kitchen knife during the few hours DR left her alone after a breakdown, her father's financial and emotional collapse, the death of her sister, her husband's illnesses, her miscarriage after sleeping with H.G Wells...it is a wonder she did anything but sit curled up in the fetal position in a darkened room.
Interesting too to see how she was screwed by her publishers – in particular the four volume set published in 1938 by Dent and Cresset (including Dimple Hill in its first publication) was, against her express instructions, marketed as "complete and final" – leading reviewers to criticise the fact that it simply petered out and allow them to claim they had been justified all along in thinking she had no idea where she was going. The crushing disappointment of this (following all those years of struggle) was one of the primary reasons her project stalled and the "final" chapter, March Moonlight, was only published posthumously.
It is impossible not to think of all those writers who, either through family money or through the writing of potboilers, were able to live and write endless reams of crap while someone as great as DR struggled on whilst being slowly buried and forgotten.
She, along with Joyce and Proust, are the great investigators of individual consciousness – literary phenomenologists in a way – and, though I rank Joyce higher (simply due to the fact that I think few artists have ever come close to Finnegans Wake), she deserves to be considered and read and loved just as much as Marcel and Jamesy. That she is not is simply because she is a woman, because she is experimental, because she is queer, because she essentially wrote one 2000-odd page novel, because people think her work "just" autobiographical (as if, even if it were, it would not still be entirely fictional), because "nothing happens" (apart from, of course, LIFE, living, being, existing….all those days filled with events and emotions). These are, obviously, not legitimate reasons for her burial.
One should also note that the chapters in Pilgrimage are written in a way reflective of the consciousness of Miriam at the time – there is a reason the texts become more complex as she ages and develops, as she learns. To read only Pointed Roofs is like only reading Dubliners and then wondering why people claim Joyce to be experimental.
So…look…I have spent the last 2 months reading all of her published works (with only her letters to go) and am entirely convinced of both her genius and her importance in the development of the novel in the 20thc (her influence on Woolf, for example, is clear). If, over the years of me rambling on this site, my opinion has any weight, I hope this will help to get her on your radar.
Pointed Roofs can be had for free from Gutenberg, as can some of the others. Please read her, she deserves your attention.
Usually, when reading a biography of a writer whose work I have fallen in love with, there are moments of disappointment – they will turn out to have been a racist, or a complete asshat, or done something else to make them fall lower in my estimation. Thankfully DR's life and work have done the precise opposite. From her refusal to be turned aside from her literary project by the great weight of patriarchal, capitalist society – the pressures of low sales, of wilful miss-representation of her work – to her engagement with and concern for the Jewish population in Europe in the 30s, my adoration has simply increased.
Her life story is a sad read, unsurprisingly. One can only imagine the great works we would be lucky to have had she been properly supported by the establishment. Hers was that impossible world of the impoverished, experimental writer – one would get an advance from a publisher to provide money to live on whilst writing a book and then, following low sales (often due to poor promotion) one would be in debt to the publisher with no income forthcoming and no mental or physical space to continue writing. Bryher tried to help, of course, but it was never enough. The odd bit of translation work or article writing helped too but, fundamentally, how can anyone focus on writing with all those problems surrounding them?
When one adds the traumas of her life - her mother slitting her own throat with a kitchen knife during the few hours DR left her alone after a breakdown, her father's financial and emotional collapse, the death of her sister, her husband's illnesses, her miscarriage after sleeping with H.G Wells...it is a wonder she did anything but sit curled up in the fetal position in a darkened room.
Interesting too to see how she was screwed by her publishers – in particular the four volume set published in 1938 by Dent and Cresset (including Dimple Hill in its first publication) was, against her express instructions, marketed as "complete and final" – leading reviewers to criticise the fact that it simply petered out and allow them to claim they had been justified all along in thinking she had no idea where she was going. The crushing disappointment of this (following all those years of struggle) was one of the primary reasons her project stalled and the "final" chapter, March Moonlight, was only published posthumously.
It is impossible not to think of all those writers who, either through family money or through the writing of potboilers, were able to live and write endless reams of crap while someone as great as DR struggled on whilst being slowly buried and forgotten.
She, along with Joyce and Proust, are the great investigators of individual consciousness – literary phenomenologists in a way – and, though I rank Joyce higher (simply due to the fact that I think few artists have ever come close to Finnegans Wake), she deserves to be considered and read and loved just as much as Marcel and Jamesy. That she is not is simply because she is a woman, because she is experimental, because she is queer, because she essentially wrote one 2000-odd page novel, because people think her work "just" autobiographical (as if, even if it were, it would not still be entirely fictional), because "nothing happens" (apart from, of course, LIFE, living, being, existing….all those days filled with events and emotions). These are, obviously, not legitimate reasons for her burial.
One should also note that the chapters in Pilgrimage are written in a way reflective of the consciousness of Miriam at the time – there is a reason the texts become more complex as she ages and develops, as she learns. To read only Pointed Roofs is like only reading Dubliners and then wondering why people claim Joyce to be experimental.
So…look…I have spent the last 2 months reading all of her published works (with only her letters to go) and am entirely convinced of both her genius and her importance in the development of the novel in the 20thc (her influence on Woolf, for example, is clear). If, over the years of me rambling on this site, my opinion has any weight, I hope this will help to get her on your radar.
Pointed Roofs can be had for free from Gutenberg, as can some of the others. Please read her, she deserves your attention.
November 12, 2022
Review to follow.
December 28, 2022
I mean, a biography is by its very nature limited by the excitement of the subject's life. Dorothy could just as easily have been old mother Hubbard, but she was a person who felt strongly that her self, that's SELF, personhood was inviolable either in real life or in her world of fiction.
I am torn in this, because I can acknowledge that her work is difficult in that very little happens. And that is a preference, but DMR did it, stuck with it, because it was her method of writing and expressing her views of the world. I want others to maintain that level of integrity upon themselves as DMR did. Fromm brings this to the forefront of the conversation while also relating parts of Pilgrimage to DMR's life.
Between reading this and Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf biography I feel a sympathy with the female authors at the beginning of this century. Strongly recommended for all.
I am torn in this, because I can acknowledge that her work is difficult in that very little happens. And that is a preference, but DMR did it, stuck with it, because it was her method of writing and expressing her views of the world. I want others to maintain that level of integrity upon themselves as DMR did. Fromm brings this to the forefront of the conversation while also relating parts of Pilgrimage to DMR's life.
Between reading this and Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf biography I feel a sympathy with the female authors at the beginning of this century. Strongly recommended for all.
April 10, 2023
This is a great literate biography of a not well enough known British writer!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews