2014

Dr Rebecca Bowler, the Research Associate on the Dorothy Richardson Editions Project, has just returned from Yale University, where she held the H.D. Fellowship in English and American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The fellowship is named after the American imagist poet, Hilda Doolittle, who wrote under the name of H.D. and was a close friend of Richardson.

 

Rebecca says, of her time at the Beinecke: "The photocopies and microfilm copies of the letters that the project has are wonderful resources, but nothing can beat holding the originals in your hands, and squinting hard at words that Richardson scribbled hastily, trying to work out what they can possibly say.

 

"The H.D. and Bryher Papers are also exciting treasure troves of material. One postcard I found in there, sent from H.D. to Bryher from Switzerland, was previously unknown to us. It features one of Alan Odle's rather wonderful elephant sketches, a note from H.D., which reads 'From "the slopes of paradise"', and a handwritten message from Richardson to Bryher: 'Salut!'."

 

The Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project won a £966,466 grant from the AHRC last year to edit and publish ten volumes of the work and letters of the pioneering modernist writer, Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957) with Oxford University Press. Based at Keele, the project is a five-year collaboration between Keele, and the universities of Oxford, London and Birmingham.