Background
Doolittle, Hilda was born on September 10, 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. Daughter of Charles Leander and Helen (Wolle) Doolittle.
Doolittle, Hilda was born on September 10, 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. Daughter of Charles Leander and Helen (Wolle) Doolittle.
Student Bryn Mawr College, 1905-1907.
H.D. was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1886 and moved to London in 1911, where her publications earned her a central role within the then emerging Imagist movement. A charismatic figure, she was championed by the modernist poet Ezra Pound, who was instrumental in building and furthering her career. From 1916–17, she acted as the literary editor of the Egoist journal, while her poetry appeared in the English Review and the Transatlantic Review. During the First World War, H.D. suffered the death of her brother and the breakup of her marriage to the poet Richard Aldington, and these events weighed heavily on her later poetry. Glenn Hughes, an authority on Imagism, wrote that 'her loneliness cries out from her poems'. She had a deep interest in Ancient Greek literature, and her poetry often borrowed from Greek mythology and classical poets. Her work is noted for its incorporation of natural scenes and objects, which are often used to emote a particular feeling or mood.
She befriended Sigmund Freud during the 1930s, and became his patient in order to understand and express her bisexuality. H.D. married once, and undertook a number of relationships with both men and women. She was unapologetic about her sexuality, and thus 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.
Author: Sea Garden, 1916. Hymen, 1921
Heliodora, 1924. Collected Poems, 1925.Palimpsest, 1926
Hippolytus Temporizes, 1927. Hedylus, 1928
Red Roses for Bronze, 1931. (translation) Ion, 1937.By Avon River, 1949
The Walls Do Not Fall, 1944. Tribute to the Angels, 1945. The Flowering of the Rod, 1946.Tribute to Freud, 1956. Selected Poems, 1957. Bid Me to Live, 1960.Helen in Egypt, 1961.
Member Poetry Society American.
Married Richard Aldington, 1913 (divorced 1938). Children: Perdita (Mistress.