Publishing Pilgrimage
About a year ago, I became a publisher. It was an act of desperation. Back in March 2016, as part of my second year of reading exclusively the work of neglected women writers, I took …
Dorothy Richardson
Free E-books of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage — and a technical note
Almost two years ago, I embarked upon my most ambitious and, it turned out, most rewarding reading task, working through the thirteen books of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage. (Richardson referred to it as a single novel …
Dorothy Richardson Answers 10 Questions from The Little Review
In The Little Review Anthology, the editor, Margaret Anderson, wrote: In 1929, in Paris, I decided that the time had come to end The Little Review. Our mission was accomplished; contemporary art had “arrived”; for …
Teetgen’s Teas, from Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage
Three times in the course of Dorothy Richardson’s “novel in chapters,” Pilgrimage, a tea shop in a small and unnamed London street spurs an intense connection in the subconsciousness of her protagonist and fictional counterpart, …
On Pilgrimage: a Dialogue with Kate Macdonald
About the time I was well into reading through Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage a couple of months ago, I discovered that Kate Macdonald, Visiting Fellow at the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading …
Village Life Through a Villager’s Eyes, from March Moonlight, by Dorothy Richardson
… I asked her, myself considering it for the first time, to imagine herself spending her life in a village, amongst people all known to her and many of them her relatives; to picture the …
March Moonlight, 13th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1967)
For nearly 30 years, Dimple Hill (Amazon) was the last chapter in Dorothy Richardson’s novel series, Pilgrimage. That was not Richardson’s plan. Even as the 1938 collected edition of Pilgrimage was being distributed by J. …
Dimple Hill, 12th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1938)
Twenty-four years after launching Pilgrimage with Pointed Roofs, Dorothy Richardson found herself struggling to progress with its twelfth volume, Dimple Hill (Amazon). The sales of her books had dwindled into the hundreds with each succeeding …
Clear Horizon, 11th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1935)
Clear Horizon (Amazon) brings the London period of Pilgrimage to its end, ten years later, with Miriam Henderson passing thirty and taking the decision to turn her back on her life and work there. Having …
“West End Life,” from Revolving Lights, by Dorothy Richardson
Within the stillness she heard the jingling of hansoms, swinging in morning sunlight along the wide thoroughfares of the West End; saw the wide leisurely shop-fronts displaying in a restrained profusion, comfortably within reach of …
Dawn’s Left Hand, 10th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson
Of all the Pilgrimage series, Dawn’s Left Hand (Amazon) by far offers the richest lode for Richardson scholars to mine for publication material. Not because it’s the longest (it’s not) or the best (it’s not, …
Oberland, 9th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1927)
For those reviewers who were growing weary of the “gas-light drabness” of Pilgrimage’s London novels, Oberland (Amazon) offered a refreshing change of scenery — literally. For reasons that, in typical Richardson fashion, are never quite …
The Trap, 8th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1925)
Having expanded her social horizons over the course of the last four chapters, in The Trap Miriam Henderson decides to undertake an experiment in social living that proves the quandary from which Richardson takes her …
Revolving Lights, 7th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1923)
Revolving Lights is both a fairly seamless continuation of the preceding chapter, Deadlock, and a progression towards the style and perspective of the remaining books in Pilgrimage. Having spurned Michael Shatov’s interest in marriage, Miriam …
Deadlock, 6th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1921)
Deadlock (Internet Archive, Amazon) opens the third volume in any of the various four-volume editions of Pilgrimage. Roughly half way through, in other words, at least in terms of pages. And I suspect that many …
Interim, 5th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1919)
Interim (Internet Archive, Amazon) opens (once again) with Miriam, bag in hand, on a doorstep. In this case, it’s at the Putney home of Grace and Florrie Broom, two sisters who were her students at …
The Tunnel, 4th Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1919)
The Tunnel (Internet Archive/Amazon) opens with another arrival, as Miriam Henderson comes, heavy bag in hand, to Mrs. Bailey’s lodging house at 7 Tansley Street (Richardson’s real life equivalent was at 7 Endsleigh Street) in …
Honeycomb, 3rd Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1917)
Honeycomb (Amazon/Internet Archive) opens with Miriam Henderson stepping off a train at a dark English country station late one March evening in 1895. Many of the chapters in Pilgrimage begin with Miriam setting off for …
Backwater, 2nd Chapter of Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson (1916)
In Backwater (Internet Archive, Amazon), Miriam once again goes to work as a teacher in a girl’s school, but closer to home this time, on opposite Banbury Park in North London. (Dorothy Richardson’s real life …
Popular Library’s “That’s So ’70s” Take on Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage
As I mentioned in my introductory post on Pilgrimage, there have been five editions in which the complete set of chapters/novels were published: A four-volume set with 12 chapters/novels, from J. M. Dent and Cresset …