H. D. is best known as an exemplar of Imagism, the first important movement in twentieth-century poetry and a precursor of literary Modernism. As formulated by Ezra Pound, Imagism rejected conventional verse forms and upheld the image as the primary source of poetic expression. While H. D. gradually abandoned the movement's principles to accommodate her interest in mythology, occultism, and psychoanalysis, critical attention during her lifetime remained focused on her Imagist works and their revelations concerning her association with such prominent intellectuals as Pound, Richard Aldington, D. H. Lawrence, and Sigmund Freud. In recent years, however, scholars have more fully explored H. D.'s quest to define herself as an artist and to create in her later works a female mythology based on classical sources.

Biographical Information

Hilda Doolittle was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to an academic family with ties to the Moravian and Puritan faiths. She attended...