Hilda Doolittle was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. She was associated with the early 20th-century avant-garde Imagist group of poets. Became an icon for both the LGBT rights and feminist movements when her poems, plays, letters and essays were rediscovered during the 1970s and 1980s.
About H.D. in brief
Hilda Doolittle was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. She was associated with the early 20th-century avant-garde Imagist group of poets, including Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She married once, and undertook a number of relationships with both men and women. Became an icon for both the LGBT rights and feminist movements when her poems, plays, letters and essays were rediscovered during the 1970s and 1980s. Her work is noted for its incorporation of natural scenes and objects, which are often used to evoke a particular feeling or mood. She befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s, and became his patient in order to understand and express her bisexuality, her residual war trauma, her writing, and her spiritual experiences. She published under the pen name H. D. Hilda was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1886, and grew up just outside Philadelphia in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. She moved to London in 1911, where she played a central role within the then-emerging Imagist movement. Young and charismatic, she was championed by the modernist poet Ezra Pound, who was instrumental in building her career. She had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets. During World War I, she suffered the death of her brother and the breakup of her marriage to the poetRichard Aldington, and these events weighed heavily on her later poetry. She told various versions of this story at various times during her career, and published a variety of pseudonyms during her writing career.
Her first published writings, stories for children, were published in The Comrade, a Philadelphia Presbyterian Church paper, between 1909 and 1913, mostly under the name Edith Gray. In 1907, she became engaged to Pound, but by the time Pound left for Europe in 1908, the engagement had been called off. In 1912, three poets declared themselves the original Imagists, creating a label that was to stick to her poetry for the rest of her life. H.D. was the only surviving daughter in a family of five sons. Her father was professor of astronomy at Lehigh University and her mother, Helen, was a Moravian with a strong interest in music. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College to study Greek literature, but left after only three terms due to poor grades and the excuse of poor health. Her relationship with Frances Josepha Gregg cooled, and she met a writing enthusiast named Brigit Patmore with whom she became involved in an affair. In 1916, she acted as the literary editor of the Egoist journal, while her poetry appeared in the English Review and the Transatlantic Review. In 1917, she began a more serious career as a writer. She wrote under the pseudonym Hilda D. D., which she used until the end of the 20th century. She died in a nursing home in New York City in 1989, and was buried in New Jersey.
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