H.D.
Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist who wrote under the name H.D.
H.D. | |
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 H.D. circa 1917, photographed by Man Ray | |
| Born | Hilda Doolittle September 10, 1886 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | September 27, 1961 (aged 75) Zürich, Switzerland |
| Alma mater | Bryn Mawr College |
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H. D. was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She went to college at Bryn Mawr. The poet Marianne Moore was in her class there. Later she went to the University of Pennsylvania. There she became friends with the poets Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. She went to Europe in 1911, and she never lived in the United States again.[1]
Ezra Pound introduced her to many poets and writers in Europe.[2] In 1913 Pound sent some of her poems to ''Poetry'' magazine, and they were printed.[3] H. D. became connected to the poetry movement that Pound called imagism. In 1913 she also married the poet Richard Aldington.[1]
In 1918 H. D. became a close friend and lover of Winifred Ellerman, a novelist who used the name Bryher. They lived together for forty years.[1]
H. D. wrote many books of poetry in the 1920s. Critics gave them good reviews. Many of her poems imagined the thoughts and lives of women from Greek mythology. She connected the old stories to her own life. She used them to speak about women's lives and love.[2]
H. D. was interested in Freudian psychology. She read much about it. In the early 1930s she began psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud himself. This had a big effect on her writing.[2]
During World War II, H. D. wrote three books of poetry that together were called Trilogy. This work showed her thoughts about the violence of the world and her belief in "survival against the forces of death."[2]
H.D. died in Zurich, Switzerland on September 27, 1961.[1]
Books change
- Sea Garden (1912–1916)
- Choruses from the Iphigeneia in Aulis and The Hippollytus of Euripides (1919)
- Hymen (1921)
- Asphodel (1921–1922)
- Heliodora (1924)
- Collected Poems of H.D. (1925)
- Palimpsest (1926)
- Hippolytus Temporizes: A Play in Three Acts (1927)
- Ion (1937)
- Trilogy (1942-1944)
- Flowering of the Rod (1946)
- End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound (1958)
- Thorn Thicket (1960)
- Helen in Egypt (1961)