H. D. & Bryher: An Untold Love Story of Modernism

by Susan McCabe

Overview

H.D. & Bryher: An Untold Love Story of Modernism takes on the daring task of examining the connection between two queer women, one a poet and the other a historical novelist, living from the late 19th century through the 20th century. When they met in 1918, H.D. was a modernist poet, married to a shell-shocked adulterous poet, and pregnant by another man. She fell in love with Bryher, who was entrapped by her wealthy secretive family. Their bond grew over Greek poetry, geography, ancient history and literature, the telegraph, and telepathy. They felt their love-and their true identities existed invisibly- a giddy, and disturbing element to their relationship; they lived off and on in distant geographies, though in near continual contact. This book exposes why literary history has occluded this love story of the world wars and poetic modernism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190621247
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Susan McCabe is a professor of English and Creative Writing at USC, and has published Elizabeth Bishop: Her Poetics of Loss (1994) and Cinematic Modernism (2005) and received as well the Agha Shahid Prize for a book of poems, Descartes' Nightmare (2008).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Dramatis Personae The Voyage Out 1886-1915 Chapter 1 The Meeting: "We Too" and Modernism Chapter 2 H.D.'s Ancestral Circle Chapter 3 Bryher's Family Closet LINE 1 FLORIDE 1909-1919 Chapter 4 Sentimental Educations Chapter 5 Love & Art: Being Phantoms Together Chapter 6 Romance of Rescue & "The Jellyfish Experience" LINE 2 BORODINO 1920-1928 Chapter 7 Parting of the Veil: Greece, 1920 . . . Chapter 8 Questing America & Marianne Moore Chapter 9 Inconvenient Marriages & Wanderlust Chapter 10 Cinematics: We Three LINE 3: PSYCHOANALYSIS 1929-1939 Chapter 11 Film Morphing into Borderline Chapter 12 Enter Freud: Dreaming through the Houses Chapter 13 Death Drive & "the Perfect Bi" Chapter 14 "Group Consciousness" & ION Chapter 15 Abdication, Aggression, Anschluss LINE 4: Blitz 1939-1945 Chapter 16 Twilight Zone & "the combined UNK" Chapter 17 Walls Falling & the Drive Inward Chapter 18 S?ance Nights Chapter 19 THE WRITING ON THE WALL LINE 5: Viking 1946-1961 . . . . . . . Chapter 20 Losing One's Mind to Find It Chapter 21 Tidying up Modernism Chapter 22 Cold War Romances Chapter 23 Recovery & Illuminations 1953- Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"McCabe is intimately alert to the ever-shifting world that H. D. and Bryher occupied. The biography is a helpful guide to the signs, symbols, nicknames and ménages à trois that helped the couple to understand and protect themselves as a family unit over four decades." — Jade French, TLS

"This double biography is the untold story of two lifelong lovers who, together and apart, played a role in shaping Modernism and the sexual politics that lay ahead" — Cassandra Langer, The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide

"This rich and stunning biography tells the untold story of two women, Bryher and H.D., who radically shaped modernism. McCabe uncovers the emergence of their aesthetics, spirituality, sexuality, politics and more—together and apart—against the backdrop of the oppressive milieu, their international travel, and beyond" — Cassandra Laity, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

"Susan McCabe reclaims the lifelong love affair of H.D. and Bryher for our time. The couple emerges not just as collaborators at the forefront of literary modernism but as champions of gender fluidity." — Linda Leavell, author of Holding On Upside Down: The Life and Work of Marianne Moore

From the Publisher