Dorothy Richardson Bio

The search for being that so absorbed the English novelist Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957) and fed her literary inventiveness is at the heart of this biography, originally published in 1977. The book traces the development of "Pilgrimage", including details of how and why it was begun, and the extent to which Richardson's life and art interacted as the novel progressed through its 13 volumes. Drawing on a variety of unpublished material, Gloria G. Fromm analyzes Richardson, the historical person, vis a vis Miriam Henderson, the character created and developed in "Pilgrimage". Among the topics to which Fromm pays particular attention are the conflict between Richardson's masculine and feminine roles, her unusual marital arrangement with the artist Allan Odle, her affair with H.G. Wells, and her relationship to such contemporaries as Marcel Proust and James Joyce.