Dorothy Richardson

Dorothy has moved to @dorothyrichardson.bsky.social

The next meeting of the Pilgrimage online reading group is on Monday 2 February at 19.00GMT. All details here readingpilgrimage.com.

London Modernism Seminar Spring Schedule Saturday 7 February Modernist Experiences Francesca Wade, "On Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife” Tymek Woodham, Queen Mary University of London, "‘Total Experience’ and its accompaniment: Nonnarrative theatre at Black Mountain College"

Apart from the limits of a Desert Island allowance, there are of course numbers of books one cherishes, both by men & by women. All books are con¬ducted tours &, incidentally, self-portraits of the conductor. Dorothy Richardson to Henry Savage 11 March 1950

At last we admitted Ralph Inge. So now you know what to you will appear the utter blindness of D.R. in the matter of LITERATURE.

It occurred to me the other day to ask a widely-read young woman what would be her desert-island books, & to wonder over my own. We surveyed. Simultaneously we rejected Shakespeare, apart from a few sonnets.

Shakespeare knew all this in saying conscience is born of love. Love of self is not self-admiration, not "narcissism". For the narcissist loves neither himself nor others. Richardson to Henry Savage 2 September 1951

& are perpetually aware of the inner dia­logue. When I accuses myself, reasons with myself, begs for better doings, what is this I? Love, surely. Self-love at its best & the source of all other loves.

Yes, indeed, endless the speculations as to the "origin of evil" & the "guilt-complex." Yet surely, outweighing them all, is the one astounding fact: the presence in our trinitarian nature of I & Me, or better, of I & Myself. "I say to myself" we say,

Upcoming event | @McCrackenScott (QMUL) and @jolowinning (@LiteraryMonash) | 'Letters as source and absence: Reading Dorothy Richardson’s Letters as Life Writing' | Japanese Studies Centre | Monash Clayton | 12 November 2024, 3-5pm: monash.edu/arts/languages…

Two Richardsonians will be speaking at the Book launch of A Comparative History of the Literary Draft in Europe with Olga Beloborodova, Dirk Van Hulle, Bryony Randall, Hannah Sullivan, Scott McCracken, Wednesday 30 October 2024, 5.15 pm, All Souls College, Old Library

Most of us were what Lawson Dodd labelled “poor-law girls”, independent, existing, (quite happily) just above the poverty-line on very small salaries. Richardson to Vincent Brome January 1950

“Free-love” formed part of the Gospel of the younger Fabians. The family was to be liquidated (H. G.’s “Socialism & the Family”)I recall a solemn discussion, at a meeting of young women, on the desirability of selecting a suitable male, producing an infant & going on the rates.

Bella Donna, Munificent, magnificent of you to make me a picture from the midst of your bath Sulphur bath – nay nay Letheoh divine forgetfulness. Richardson to H.D. May 1927

I think I haven’t read the Elizabethans – I know they are said to have had strong stomachs & that is a great deal. But always I have been shy of belles lettres and always, meeting such, been as much angered – & amazed – as delighted. Richardson to Bryher Autumn 1926

a spencer with long sleeves. I feel utterly degraded & shan’t dare till the spring to give them up. Richardson to Bryher Autumn 1926

The carpenter came. Many of the air currents have departed & the weather is now more Cornish. Mild & a little foolish. But I hate my underlinen[...] Ithese floors have exacted two pairs of stockings & that most detestable of all clammy cloggy clinging things

the Lawrences & their hostess should raid your party . I expect you have standing room for nine people. My friend has not, so that we could not in any case make a raid on her. What do you say? Yours sincerely Dorothy M. Richardson. Richardson to Louis Untermeyer September 1926

Dear Mr Untermeyer: A friend is having D. H. Lawrence & his wife to dine on Wednesday & has asked us to join them. I am not at all sure we would have gone if we had been free. But it occurs to me as “quite an idea” to suggest that sometime during the evening