Poet/ Editor/ Publisher is an annotated edition of the selected correspondence of Sylvia Beach, publisher and owner of the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, the writer and editor Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman), and her partner, the poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). The years covered by this selection, 1918 to 1931, are some of the most prolific for these women and for modernism. Beach published James Joyce’s Ulysses, H.D. wrote several books of poetry and prose, Bryher established POOL Productions and Close Up, the first magazine devoted to film criticism, and much more.
The relationships fostered among H.D., Bryher, and Beach express an unconventional model for creative production—one more concerned with helping each other than making a profit. This model is expressed not only in Bryher’s publishing endeavors and financial support of Shakespeare and Company and other artists in her sphere, but also in the well-documented sacrifices Beach made to bring out Ulysses.
Chatty and endearing, the letters demonstrate the way these relationships passed seamlessly from social to professional and back again. They are full of gossip, but also valuable professional advice and encouragement. For Bryher and H.D., who lived in Territet, Switzerland, Beach provided an essential connection not only to a major center of avant-garde art, but also, and more practically, to the mechanisms of distributing modernist writing: publishers, editors, literary journals, and printers.
This dissertation joins a recovery of the work of women in the early twentieth century as well as a reconsideration of the roles each woman played in developing the modernist canon. These letters offer evidence of the influence of each woman’s efforts on an international network of artists and insight into the labor behind the great works of modernism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/41533 |
| Date | 13 October 2020 |
| Creators | Eckenroth, Lauren D. |
| Contributors | Burnett, Archie |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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