Dorothy Miller Richardson (17 May 1873 – 17 June 1957) was a British author and journalist. Author of ''

Pilgrimage A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...

'', a sequence of 13 semi-autobiographical novels published between 1915 and 1967—though Richardson saw them as chapters of one work—she was one of the earliest

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

s to use

stream of consciousness In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator. The term was coined by Daniel Oliver in 1840 in ''First L ...

as a

narrative technique A narrative technique (known for literary fictional narratives as a literary technique, literary device, or fictional device) is any of several specific methods the creator of a narrative uses to convey what they want —in other words, a str ...

. Richardson also emphasises in ''Pilgrimage'' the importance and distinct nature of female experiences. The title ''Pilgrimage'' alludes not only to "the journey of the artist ... to self-realisation but, more practically, to the discovery of a unique creative form and expression".

Biography

Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873, the third of four daughters. After the fourth daughter was born her father (Charles) began referring to Dorothy as his son. Richardson "also attributed this habit to her own boylike willfulness". She lived at 'Whitefield' a large mansion type house on Albert Park (built by her father in 1871 and now owned by Abingdon School. Her family moved to

Worthing Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Ho ...

, West Sussex in 1880 and then

Putney Putney () is a district of southwest London, England, in the London Borough of Wandsworth, southwest of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London. History Putney is an ancient paris ...

, London in 1883. In London she "attended a progressive school influenced by the ideas of

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...

", and where "the pupils were encouraged to think for themselves". Here she "studied French, German, literature, logic and psychology". At seventeen, because of her father's financial difficulties she went to work as a governess and teacher, first in 1891 for six months at a finishing school in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

, Germany. In 1895 Richardson gave up work as a governess to take care of her severely depressed mother, but her mother committed suicide the same year. Richardson's father had become bankrupt at the end of 1893. Richardson subsequently moved in 1896 to an attic room, 7 Endsleigh Street, Bloomsbury, London, where she worked as a receptionist/secretary/assistant in a Harley Street dental surgery. While in Bloomsbury in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Richardson associated with writers and radicals, including the Bloomsbury Group. In 1904 she took a holiday in the

Bernese Oberland The Bernese Oberland ( en, Bernese Highlands, german: Berner Oberland; gsw, Bärner Oberland; french: Oberland bernois), the highest and southernmost part of the canton of Bern, is one of the canton's five administrative regions (in which context ...

, financed by one of the dentists, which was the source for her novel ''Oberland''.

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

Pevensey Pevensey ( ) is a village and civil parish in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. The main village is located north-east of Eastbourne, one mile (1.6 km) inland from Pevensey Bay. The settlement of Pevensey Bay forms part ...

, Sussex and went to Switzerland for the winter. Then she resigned from her Harley Street job and left London "to spend the next few years in Sussex ... on a farm run by a Quaker family". Richardson's interest in the

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...

led to her writing ''The Quakers Past and Present'' and editing an anthology ''Gleanings from the Works of George Fox'', which were both published in 1914. She spent much of 1912 in

Cornwall Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...

, and then in 1913 rented a room in

St John's Wood St John's Wood is a district in the City of Westminster, London, lying 2.5 miles (4 km) northwest of Charing Cross. Traditionally the northern part of the ancient parish and Metropolitan Borough of Marylebone, it extends east to west from ...

, London, though she also lived in Cornwall. While she had first published an article in 1902, Richardson's writing career, as a freelance journalist really began around 1906, with periodical articles on various topics, book reviews, short stories, and poems, and as well as she translated during her life eight books into English from French and German. The subjects of Richardson's book reviews and early essays range "for Whitman and

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his car ...

to French philosophy and British politics" demonstrating both "the range of her interests and the sharpness of her mind". Starting in 1908 Richardson regularly wrote short prose essays, "sketches" for the '' Saturday Review'', and around 1912 "a reviewer urged her to try writing a novel". She began writing '' Pointed Roofs'', in the autumn of 1912, while staying with J. D. Beresford and his wife in Cornwall, and it was published in 1915. She married the artist Alan Odle (1888–1948) in 1917—a distinctly bohemian figure, associated with an artistic circle that included

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...

Jacob Epstein Sir Jacob Epstein (10 November 1880 – 21 August 1959) was an American-British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British subject in 1911. He often produce ...

, and

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''BLAST,'' the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His novels include ''Tarr'' ( ...

. He was fifteen years younger than her, tubercular and an alcoholic, and was not expected to live long. However, he stopped drinking and lived until 1948. Odle was very thin and "over six feet tall with waist-length hair wound around the outside of his head", which he never cut. He also rarely cut his finger nails. From 1917 until 1939, the couple spent their winters in Cornwall and their summers in London; and then stayed permanently in Cornwall until Odle’s death in 1948. She supported herself and her husband with freelance writing for periodicals for many years, as Alan made little money from his art. Between 1927 and 1933 she published 23 articles on film in the avant-garde little magazine, ''

Close Up A close-up or closeup in filmmaking, television production, still photography, and the comic strip medium is a type of shot that tightly frames a person or object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium and long ...

'', with which her close friend

Bryher Bryher ( kw, Breyer "place of hills") is one of the smallest inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 84 in 2011, spread across . History The name of the island is recorded as ''Brayer'' in 1336 and ''Brear'' in 1500. Ge ...

was involved. In 1954, she had to move into a nursing home in the London suburb of

Beckenham Beckenham () is a town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley, in Greater London. Until 1965 it was part of the historic county of Kent. It is located south-east of Charing Cross, situated north of Elmers End and E ...

, Kent, where she died in 1957. The last chapters (books) of ''Pilgrimage'', published during Richardson's lifetime, were ''Clear Horizon'' in 1935 and ''Dimple Hill'' with the 1938 Collected Edition. This Collected Edition was poorly received and Richardson only published, during the rest of her life, three chapters of another volume in 1946, as work in "Work in Progress," in ''Life and Letters''. The final chapter (13th book) of ''Pilgrimage'', ''March Moonlight'', was not published until 1967, where it forms the conclusion to Volume IV of the Collected Edition; though the first three chapters had appeared as "Work in Progress," ''Life and Letters'', 1946. This novel is incomplete. Apparently because of the poor sales and disappointing reception of the Collected Edition of 1938, she lost heart. She was 65 in 1938.

Stream of consciousness

In a review of ''Pointed Roofs'' (''The Egoist'' April 1918),

May Sinclair May Sinclair was the pseudonym of Mary Amelia St. Clair (24 August 1863 – 14 November 1946), a popular British writer who wrote about two dozen novels, short stories and poetry. She was an active suffragist, and member of the Woman Writers' S ...

first applied the term "stream of consciousness" in her discussion of Richardson's stylistic innovations. ''Pointed Roofs'' was the first volume of ''Pilgrimage'', the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. The term was coined by

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...

in 1890 in his ''

The Principles of Psychology ''The Principles of Psychology'' is an 1890 book about psychology by William James, an American philosopher and psychologist who trained to be a physician before going into psychology. There are four methods from James' book: stream of consciousne ...

''. In a letter to the bookseller and publisher Sylvia Beach in 1934, Richardson comments that "

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel '' In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous E ...

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

& D.R. ... were all using 'the new method', though very differently, simultaneously". Richardson hated the term, calling it in 1949 "that lamentably meaningless metaphor 'The ''Shroud'' of Consciousness' borrowed ... by May Sinclair from the epistemologists, ... to describe my work, & still, in Lit. criticism. pushing its inane career".

''Pilgrimage''

Miriam Henderson, the central character in the ''Pilgrimage'' novel sequence, is based on author's own life between 1891 and 1915. Richardson, however, saw ''Pilgrimage'' as one novel for which each of the individual volumes were "chapters". ''Pilgrimage'' was read as a work of fiction and "its critics did not suspect that its content was a reshaping of DMR's own experience", nor that it was a ''

roman à clef ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship be ...

''.

Feminist writer

Richardson is also an important feminist writer, because of the way her work assumes the validity and importance of female experiences as a subject for literature. She records that when she began writing, "attempting to produce a feminine equivalent of the current masculine realism", and after setting aside "a considerable mass of manuscript" finding "a fresh pathway". Her wariness of the conventions of language, her bending of the normal rules of punctuation, sentence length, and so on, are used to create a feminine prose, which Richardson saw as necessary for the expression of female experience.

in 1923 noted, that Richardson "has invented, or, if she has not invented, developed and applied to her own uses, a sentence which we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender." In her 1938 "Foreword" to the Collected Edition of ''Pilgrimage'' Richardson responded to criticism of her writing, "for being unpunctuated and therefore unreadable", arguing that "Feminine prose, as Charles Dickens and James Joyce show themselves to be aware, should properly be unpunctuated, moving from point to point without formal obstruction".

John Cowper Powys John Cowper Powys (; 8 October 187217 June 1963) was an English philosopher, lecturer, novelist, critic and poet born in Shirley, Derbyshire, where his father was vicar of the parish church in 1871–1879. Powys appeared with a volume of verse ...

, writing in 1931, saw Richardson as a "pioneer in a completely new direction" because she has created in her protagonist Miriam the first woman character who embodies the female "quest for the essence of human experience". Powys contrast Richardson with other women novelists, such as

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

and

whom he sees as betraying their deepest feminine instincts by using "as their medium of research not these instincts but the rationalistic methods of men". Likewise in 1975 Sydney Janet Kaplan describes ''Pilgrimage'' as "conceived in revolt against the established tradition of fiction. ... ichardson'swriting marks a revolution in perspective, a shift from a 'masculine' to a 'feminine' method of exposition".

London novelist

After first working as a governess in Germany and then England, early in her life Richardson "lived in a Bloomsbury attic ... ndLondon became her great adventure. And although ''Pointed Roofs'' focuses on Miriam's experience as a governess in Germany, much of ''Pilgrimage'' is set in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. London "is an 'elastic' material space that facilitates Miriam’s public life. London’s streets, cafés, restaurants and clubs figure largely in her explorations, which extend her knowledge of both the city and herself". John Cowper Powys in his 1931 study of Richardson, describes her as London's

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

, who instead of "the mystery of mountains and lakes" gives us "the mystery of roof-tops and pavements".

Reputation

Rebecca Bowler wrote in August 2015: "Given Richardson’s importance to the development of the English novel, her subsequent neglect is extraordinary". The first few of her novels "were received with rapturous enthusiasm and occasional confusion", but by the 1930s interest had declined—despite John Cowper Powys championing her in his short critical study ''Dorothy M. Richardson'' (1931). In 1928

Conrad Aiken Conrad Potter Aiken (August 5, 1889 – August 17, 1973) was an American writer and poet, honored with a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, and was United States Poet Laureate from 1950 to 1952. His published works include poetry, short ...

, in a review of ''Oberland'' had attempted to explain why she was so "curiously little known," and offered the following reasons: her "minute recording" which tires those who want action; her choice of a woman's mind as centre; and her heroine's lack of "charm." By 1938 "she was sufficiently obscure for

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...

to bewail the 'amazing phenomenon' of her 'complete world neglect. However, Richardson changed publishers and Dent & Cresset Press published a new Collected Edition of Pilgrimage in 1938. This was republished by

Virago Press Virago is a British publisher of women's writing and books on feminist topics. Started and run by women in the 1970s and bolstered by the success of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), Virago has been credited as one of several British femini ...

"in the late 1970s, in its admirable but temporary repopularisation of Richardson". In 1976 in America, a four volume Popular Library (New York) edition appeared. Now scholars are once again reclaiming her work and the

Arts and Humanities Research Council The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), formerly Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB), is a British research council, established in 1998, supporting research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities. History The Arts ...

in England is supporting the Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project, with the aim of publishing a collected edition of Richardson's works and letters. ''Pointed Roofs'' was translated into Japanese in 1934, French in 1965 and German in 1993. There were subsequent French translations of ''Backwater'', 1992 and ''Deadlock'', 1993. A blue plaque was unveiled, in May 2015, at

Woburn Walk Woburn Walk is a pedestrian street in Bloomsbury, London, that was designed by architect Thomas Cubitt in 1822, and it is one of the first examples of a pedestrian shopping street in the Regency era. Its name comes from Woburn Abbey, the main co ...

in Bloomsbury, where Richardson lived, in 1905 and 1906, opposite

W. B. Yeats William Butler Yeats (13 June 186528 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and became a pillar of the Irish liter ...

, and ''The Guardian'' comments that "people are starting to read her once more, again reasserting her place in the canon of experimental modernist prose writers".Rebecca Bowler
"Dorothy M Richardson deserves the recognition she is finally receiving"
''The Guardian'', 15 May 2015

Bibliography

A much fuller bibliography can be found a

Works

*
The Quakers Past and Present
', London: Constable, 1914. *
Gleanings from the Works of George Fox
', London: Headley Brothers, 1914. * ''John Austen and the Inseparables'', London: William Jackson, 1930 (about the artist John Austen). * ''Journey to Paradise: Short Stories and Autobiographical Sketches'', London: Virago, 1989. * ''

'' **Four-volume collected editions: 1938 (first 12 "chapters"; Dent and Cresset, London, and A.A. Knopf, New York), 1967 (J. M. Dent, London, and A.A. Knopf, New York), 1976 (Popular Library, New York), 1979 (Virago, London) :: See also the following feminist anthologies: *Scott, Bonnie Kime, ''The Gender of Modernism''. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, c1990. *Gilbert, Sandra M & Gubar, Susan ''Norton Anthology of Literature by Women''. New York, N.Y.: Norton, c1985.

Early reviews

*Sinclair, M., "The novels of Dorothy Richardson", ''The Egoist'', April 1918. * oolf, V. review of ''The Tunnel'', (''Times Literary Supplement'', 13 Feb 1919); . Woolf review of ''Revolving Lights'', ''The Nation and the Athenaeum'', 19 May 1923); both repr. in ''V. Woolf, Women and writing'', ed. M. Barrett 1979. *Dorothy Richardson Society Bibliography: Reviews and Obituarie

Obituaries

*''The Times'', 18 June 1957. *''Manchester Guardian'', 18 June 1957.

Bibliographical studies

*Buchanan, Averill, ''Journal of Modern Literature'', Vol. 24, No. 1, Autumn, 2000, 'Dorothy Miller Richardson: A Bibliography 1900 to 1999', pp. 135–160.

Biographies and letters

*Fouli, Janet (ed.). ''The Letters of John Cowper Powys and Dorothy Richardson''. London: Cecil Wolf, 2008. *Fromm, Gloria G. ''Dorothy Richardson: A Biography''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. *Fromm, Gloria G. (ed.). ''Windows on Modernism: Selected Letters of Dorothy Richardson''. Athens, Georgia, U. of Georgia Press, 1995. *Gregory, Horace. ''Dorothy Richardson: An Adventure in Self-Discovery''. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967. *Rosenberg, John D. ''Dorothy Richardson: The Genius They Forgot. A Critical Biography''. London: Duckworth; New York: Knopf, 1973. *Thomson, George H. ''Dorothy Richardson: A Calendar of the Letters''. ELT Press E-Book no.4, University of North Carolina at Greenboro.

Critical studies

*Blake, Caesar R. ''Dorothy M. Richardson''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960. *Bluemel, Kristin. ''Experimenting on the Borders of Modernism: Dorothy Richardson's 'Pilgrimage' ''. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997. *Eagleson, Harvey. ''Pedestal for Statue: 'The Novels of Dorothy M. Richardson''. Sewanee, Tenn.: The University Press, 1934. *Fouli, Janet. ''Structure and Identity: the Creative Imagination in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage''. Faculté des Lettres de la Manouba, Tunis, 1995. *Gevirtz, Susan. ''Narrative's Journey: the Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson''. New York: P. Lang, 1996. *Hanscombe, Gillian E. ''The Art of Life: Dorothy Richardson and the Development of Feminist Consciousness''. London: Owen, 1982; Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983. *Powys, John Cowper. ''Dorothy M. Richardson''. London: Joiner & Steele, 1931. *Radford, Jean. ''Dorothy Richardson''. New York & London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. *Staley, Thomas F. ''Dorothy Richardson''. Boston: Twayne, 1976. *Thomson, George H. ''Notes on 'Pilgrimage': Dorothy Richardson Annotated''. Greensboro, N.C.: ELT Press, 1999. *Thomson, George H. with Thomson, Dorothy F. ''The Editions of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage: A Comparison of Texts''. Greensboro, N.C.: ELT Press, 2001. *Tucker, Eva. ''Pilgrimage: The Enchanted Guest of Spring and Summer: Dorothy Richardson 1873-1954: a Reassessment of Her Life and Work''. Penzance: Hypatia Press, 2003. *Watts, Carol. ''Dorothy Richardson''. Plymouth: Northcote House in association with the British Council, 1995. *Winning, Joanne. ''The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson''. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000.

Works partially on Richardson

*Kaplan, Sydney Janet. ''Feminine Consciousness in the Modem British Novel''. Urbana & London: University of Illinois Press, 1975. *Linett, Maren Tova. ''Modernism, Feminism, and Jewishness''. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. *Parsons, Deborah. ''Theorists of the modernist novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf''. Abingdon: Routledge, 2007.

Main archives

*Beinecke Library, Yale University. A large collection of letters. *British Library. Letters to E. B. C. Jones; letters to S. S. Koteliansky. *Berg Collection, New York Public Library. Letters to P. P. Wadsworth *Harry Ransom HRC, Austin, Texas. *Library of Pennsylvania State University *University of Tulsa. Letters and mss.

References

External links

* * * * *
Dorothy Richardson Society

Dorothy Richardson Online Exhibition of Letters

Calendar of Letters
* hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.richards, Dorothy Richardson Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Dorothy 1873 births 1957 deaths 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British women writers British feminists British journalists British women novelists Modernist women writers Modernist writers People from Abingdon-on-Thames