Photograph of Dorothy Richardson

Dorothy Richardson (1873 – 1957) was the author of the pioneering modernist novel Pilgrimage. She published twelve chapter-volumes of Pilgrimage in her lifetime, and a thirteenth, March Moonlight, came out after her death.

Her work was hailed as innovative, involved, and illuminating, and her refusal to narrate anything that the main character Miriam Henderson could not perceive caused her novels to be labelled ‘stream of consciousness’, in the first application of that phrase to literature.

Miriam leaves home at seventeen, becomes a student teacher in Germany and then in London. She works as a dental secretary, reads philosophy, makes friends with Zionists and socialists, has a breakdown, has a love affair, meets famous writers and frequents cafés. The story of her life is the story of fin-de-siècle London.

Modernist Networks

Bryher

Dorothy Richardson agrees to write for Close Up, Bryher's new avant-garde film magazine, and suggests other possible contributors

Publishing Pilgrimage

S.S. Kotelianksy

S.S. Kotelianksy helps Richardson find a new publisher for her novels, and Dorothy Richardson pleads for a new collected edition

Jokes and Fragments

Elephant sketch

A miscellany of material: witty letters, pretty letters, silly letters, Alan Odle pictures, and characteristic Richardsonian story telling
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