H.D.'s wartime masterwork (first pub 1944-46) 

Trilogy: The Walls Do Not Fall, Tribute to the Angels, the Flowering of the Rod, (A New Directions Book)

Hilda Doolittle

Literature & Fiction

New Directions

“H. D's wit, sense of rhythm, and control of language prove the inadequacy of the imagist label that is so often applied to this writer.” ―Library Journal This autobiographical novel, an interior self-portrait of the poet H. D. (1886-1961) is what can best be described as a "find,' a posthumous treasure. In writing HERmione, H.D. returned to a year in her life that was "peculiarly blighted." She was in her early twenties––"a disappointment to her father, an odd duckling to her mother, an importunate, overgrown, unincarnated entity that had no place… Waves to fight against, to fight against alone…'I am Hermione Gart, a failure’––she cried in her dementia, 'l am Her, Her, Her."' She had failed at Bryn Mawr, she felt hemmed in by her family, she did not yet know what she was going to do with her life. The return from Europe of the wild-haired George Lowndes (Ezra Pound) expanded her horizons but threatened her sense of self. An intense new friendship with Fayne Rabb (Frances Josepha Gregg), an odd girl who was, if not lesbian, then certainly of bisexual bent, brought an atmosphere that made her hold on everyday reality more tenuous. This stormy course led to mental breakdown, then to a turning point and a new beginning as her own true self, as "Her”––the poet H.D. Perdita Schaffner, H.D.'s daughter, who can remember back to the time in 1927 when her mother was barricaded with her typewriter behind a locked door, working on this very novel, has provided a charming and telling introduction.

HERmione

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

"Surely the most delightful and precious appreciation of Freud's personality that is ever likely to be written. Only a fine creative artist could have written it.... It will live as the most enchanting ornament of all the Freudian biographical literature."―Ernest Jones Bringing together “Writing on the Wall,” composed some ten years after H.D’s stay in Vienna, and “Advent,” a journal she kept at the time of her analysis there, Tribute to Freud offers a rare glimpse into the consulting room of the father of psychoanalysis. It may also be the most intimate of H.D.’s works. Compelled by historical as well as personal crises, the poet worked with Freud during 1933-34. The streets of Vienna were littered with tokens dropped like confetti on the city, stating "Hitler gives work." "Hitler gives bread." Having endured World War I, she was now gathering her resources to face the second cataclysm she knew was approaching. In analysis, Hilda Doolittle explored her Pennsylvania childhood, her relationship with Ezra Pound (inventory of her nom de plume H.D.), Havelock Ellis, D.H. Lawrence, her ex-husband Richard Aldington, and subsequent companion Winifred Ellerman ("Bryher"), as well as her own creative processes. Freud, regarding H.D. as a student as well as a patient, wads hardly the detached presence one might imagine. Revealed here in the poet's words and in his own letters, which comprise an appendix, is the considerate friend, the charming Viennese gentleman―art collector, dog lover, wit―and the pioneer, always revising his ideas and possessed of an insight that could be terrifying in its force.

Tribute to Freud

H.D.

Tribute to Freud,

Professionals & Academics

(Pin Farm, South Hinksey, Oxford), Carcanet Press

H.D. - Wind Sleepers & Other Verse

Public Domain Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hilda Doolittle. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hilda Doolittle