Hilda Doolittle, "H. D."
(1886 - 1961) U.S.A. - U. K.
Poet and scholar
Hilda Doolittle was a lesbian American - born in Bethlehem, Pennsylavania - poet and writer, who signed her work "H.D."
She was 15 when she met the poet Ezra Pound and a close relationship developed between them. She then entered Bryn Mawr College to study Greek literature, and a year later became engaged to Pound, but she encountered health difficulties and withdrew from university. During this time she also fell in love with her first woman lover, Frances Josepha Gregg, but responded to Pound's request that she move to London.
Thus, Doolittle went to Europe in 1911, following Pound, and there she met the British writer Richard Aldington (to which she was married 1913-37, but the marriage was not a success). They founded the Imagist school of poets, whose members advocated the presentation of a clear-cut visual image in poetry, and the writing of short, concentrated poems in free rhythms.
 In 1918 she met lesbian British writer "Bryher" (née Annie Winifred Ellerman) who became her lover; they had a 40-plus-year relationship, despite the fact that during part of that time both were married (Bryher twice!). In 1922 H.D. moved into Bryher's home in Switzerland and wrote extensively, publishing over 20 books. She had a stroke and died in 1961 at a clinic in Switzerland, where Bryher had nursed her during the last months of her life.
Her several volumes of poetry, from the first, Sea Garden (1916), to her last, the quasi-epic Helen in Egypt (1961), show a deep involvement with classical mythology, a sharp, spare use of natural imagery, and interesting experiments with vers libre. She also published several novels, including Bid Me to Live (1960), a roman-à-clef about her Bloomsbury years, and Tribute to Freud (1956), an account of her analysis by Freud in 1933.
Her Collected Poems 1912 - 1944 was published in 1983. Her HERmione (1981), an autobiographical novel about a young woman torn between love for a man and for a woman (obviously Pound and Bryher) is also a posthumously issued work.
If you want to read some of H. D.'s poems, please go at his page in our book Famous Homoerotic Poems.
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