Dorothy Richardson 1873 – 1957

2.1.1.Pointed Roofs (1915)

Murry, John Middleton. "A Feminine Novel," Daily News & Leader, [London] 22 Sept 1915,p.6.
First review of Pointed Roofs. "Pointed Roofs is an utterly personal book, significant chiefly by its lack of real significance... It is for all its modernity and its punctuation a la mitrailleuse the book of a girl. What it vaguely foreshadows is the realisation of the female principle in literature. But that has been far more significantly attempted by Mrs Virginia Woolf in The Voyage Out..."

[Dalton, F.T.]. "Fiction," Times Literary Supplement, 23 Sept 1915, 323.
Brief unsigned dismissive notice of Pointed Roofs noteworthy for the gung ho anti-German war-time register.[PCL],

Pendennis. "New Novels," Pall Mall Gazette, 28 Sept 1915, 6.
Pseudonymous review of Pointed Roofs. "There is no "plot" as that word is commonly understood, but there is a vast amount of characterisation of a dim and nebulous kind... It is a mass of vagrant veracity, but there is no hint of consecutive thought in it."[PCL]

Anon. “A Fine New Novel.” Observer (London), 3 October 1915, 5.
One of the earliest and most positive reviews, maintaining not only that "the whole is clear with a clarity as keen as the gables of the charming 'pointed roofs'," but also that the novel is unforgettable.

Anon. ‘New Fiction’, Scotsman, 4 Oct 1915

"An Original Book." Saturday Review Literary Supplement [London], 120 (16 Oct. 1915): vi, viii.
Maintains stolidly that despite the "verisimilitude of her creation," DMR is labouring "in the cause of fictional pathology. The book is a charted dissection of an unsound mind. It lays bare the workings of a sick imagination..."

Anon. "New Novels," Westminster Gazette, 30 Oct 1915, 3.
Unsigned review of Pointed Roofs illustrative of the role played by anti-German sentiment in the war-time reception of Pointed Roofs. The "events in themselves, constituting as they do, the framework on which Miriam constructs a firm admiration for almost every German thing, except perhaps the character of one spinster, are hardly serious enough, are not charged with meaning, to command - at all events just now - that patience in the reader which Miss Richardson's very clever methods undoubtedly deserve." [PCL]

Anon. "Fiction of quality," Nation, [London] 4 Dec 1915, 366-68.
Celebratory anonymous review which, unusually, acclaims Pointed Roofs as suitable war-time English literature. "There is enormous if unconscious humour in this vivid presentation of the English and the German attitude to life, and we can only echo the heroine's "My Goodney!" when she has been submerged overlong in the stream of Teutonic sentiment." [PCL]

Anon. “Miss Richardson's First Novel of a Governess's Adventures--Some Recent Works of Fiction.” New York Times Book Review, 31 December 1916, 577.
Richardson's remarkable achievement in subjective portrayal of character is noted. "What has life in store for this crude, eager, self-conscious girl. . . . We cannot even guess her future. We await with hope, and not a little fear, the record of her further unfolding, as we would await that of a real girl ... "in the volumes to follow she will be her own most formidable rival."

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2.1.2. Backwater (1916)

Anon [Walter de la Mare]. "New Novels" Times Literary Supplement, 27 July 1916, 358.
DMR's "tacit but essential assumption is that life is an intensely real and rich, a desperately complex and wonderful, experience, however complex its circmstances may be." She "is still learning her method," but "such systematic sincerity ... is a profound and affecting thing to share in." Anon. "The Scarlet Woman." Nation (London) 19 (19 August 1916): 640, 642.
A brief negative review citing "the rambling, dissipated interest of the book." The intelligent novelist should go "a step further than throwing off inarticulate disquietudes into the void."

"Fiction of To-Day." Saturday Review [London], 122 (5 Aug. 1916): 138.
Insists that "to be obscure [as DMR is] is not to be great".

Anon.‘New Novels’, Liverpool Daily Post & Mercury, 2 Aug 1916

Anon. Punch, 151, 3917, 2 Aug 1916

Anon. 'Current Literature’, Daily Telegraph, 1 Sept 1916

Pound, Ezra. "In the World of Letters," Future, 11, Dec 1916, 55-56.
'Miss Dorothy Richardson's novel Backwater shows an advance in method. There seems considerable chance that she will leave the general category of "women who write novels" and enter the next grade, "women novelists," beyond which lies the realm of "celebrities," beyond which the place of "real novelists".'

"Notes on New Fiction," Dial, [N.Y.] 62, 31 May 1917, 483.
"Backwater...takes its heroine, Miriam, through the ordeal of employment as resident governess in a school frequented by the daughters of the North London middle class. It is a chronicle of the commonplace... Miss Richardson probes..the nature of the institutionalism to which hundreds of such communities are subject, studying with notable insight the inbred pettiness against which Miriam revolts and the sentimental nature of English education."

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2.1.3. Honeycomb (1917)

"New Novels. Honeycomb." Times Literary Supplement, 16 (18 Oct. 1917): 506. Concedes that "tiresome though it often is, the book holds our interest close to a young person who is intensely and independently alive."

"According to Miriam." Saturday Review [London], 124 (24 Nov. 1917): 422. "Miss Richardson is not without talent but it is the talent of neurasthenia." Advises her to "learn that contrariety is not revelation and that health is as essential to literature as to life." The "only living thing in the book" is "the morbid and self-conscious mind [of the heroine]."

Bourne, Randolph. "An Imagist Novel." Dial, 64 (9 May 1918): 451-452. Compares the book to imagist verse but insists that it is not "verse masquerading as a novel. It is an honest narrative,...fantastic only to those who cannot feel these very modern ways of looking at the world." Also considers Pilgrimage a "completely feminine" novel, and likes its "short instalments" that are "almost exactly timed to [one's] capacity of assimilation."

Deutsch, Babette. "Imagism in Fiction." Nation, 106 (1 June 1918): 656. The novel is neither poetry nor a prose poem, instead it has "a fluency that eludes definition, a vitality that is at once original and naïve."

Deutsch, Babette. "A Modern Pilgrim." Reedy's Mirror, 27 (5 July 1918); 410-11. Review of US editions of Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb. DMR's novels are "fascinating" and distinctive, the fruit of an "original method in fiction." Claims that "what distinguishes [Pilgrimage] is a style that is one with [the heroine's] thought"; and despite "Miriam's aloofness from our own time and our own problems, in spite of her immaturity, and actually because of the leisurely character of an uneventful narrative, she is at moments more real than the people we have been living with all our lives, as intimately present and as personally important as ourselves." What distinguishes the heroine "is her effort to grasp reality"; what "quickens interest in each succeeding volume" is the "poetic temper" of the art of DMR.

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2.1.4. The Tunnel. (1919)

[Woolf, Virginia.] "The Tunnel." Times Literary Supplement, 17 (13 Feb. 1919): 81.
"This book is better in its failure [it lacks the "shapeliness of the old accepted forms"] than most novels in their success."

"Fiction." Spectator, 15 Mar. 1919: 330-331. As an "elderly male reviewer," he finds it disturbing that "Miss Richardson is not concerned with the satisfaction of the average reader," as well extremely difficult - even after having "learnt in middle age to delight in Mr. Conrad" - to accept "without reserve... the ultra-modernism of the new formula invented by Miss Richardson."
"Fiction in Brief." Saturday Review [London], 127 (22 Mar. 1919): 285. On the one hand, The Tunnel "is a book which the reader will not readily forget," and on the other, "Miss Richardson has elaborated a method which dispenses with any serious need for the art of writing, while it makes the reading of her book almost a task."

Heseltine, Olive. "Life. The Tunnel." Everyman [London], 22 Mar. 1919: 562, 565. The novel is to be described as "simply life. Shapeless, trivial, pointless, boring, beautiful, curious, profound. And above all, absorbing." The Tunnel is 'forty times more interesting than Pointed Roofs," sees "no reason why [the] chronicle should ever stop," and "hopes it never will."

"The Tunnel." Athenaeum, 4639 (Mar. 1919): 117. Notice of Publication. "The Tunnel is notably removed from the commonplace."

[Mansfield, Katherine]. "Three Women Novelists." Athenaeum, 4640 (4 Apr. 1919): 140-141. At times DMR "seems deliberately to set [her mind] a task, just for the joy of realizing again how brilliant a machine it is," but she does not try to produce a proportioned and meaningful work. The Tunnel, like the others, "is composed of bits, fragments, flashing glimpses, half scenes and whole scenes, all of them quite distinct and separate, and all of them of equal importance."

Scott-James, R.A. "Books to Read. The Man's Point of View and the Woman's." Daily Chronicle [London], 16 Apr. 1919:4. Describes Miriam's point of view as "firm, feminine, independent," and asserts that she is DMR's "mouthpiece and her mind."

"Reviews. The Tunnel." Dental Record, 39 (1 May 1919): 180-181.
Compares DMR to Sterne in that both ask much from our imagination, both divagate, both detest "humbug" and speak their minds "fearlessly," and both are "well worth reading." Also pleased to find The Tunnel the "first work of fiction... in which the dental surgeon... is faithfully drawn, where teeth are not the subject of cheap witticism, and where a typical high-class practice is described on the whole sympathetically."

"Over the Top with the New Novelists." Current Opinion, 66 (June 1919): 387-388. Excerpts from reviews. Quotes comments from reviews in various newspapers (New York Sun, London Telegraph, London Times), looking upon The Tunnel as a "grandchild of The Golden Bowl" and as kin to Three Lives.

"Books Received. The Tunnel." Dial, 67 (23 Aug. 1919): 174. Notice of publication. Notes the "increased complexity" of this novel, and the intensification of the "distinctively feminine quality" of DMR's "insight."

Rodker, John. 'The Tunnel." Little Review, 6 (Sept. 1919): 40-41.
Insists that "what was a bright and not unoriginal conception [is] becoming thickened to the diameter of a hawser": there are too many details, too much material, and DMR is "too intellectually subtle."

Deutsch, Babette. "Freedom and The Grace of God." Dial, 67 (15 Nov. 1919): 441-442.

Also reviews May Sinclair's Mary Olivier. In both novels "there is that element of 'return' to a transcendent reality which is reminiscent of poetry, that sensitive appreciation which makes for living prose." Notes also that in Pilgrimage Miriam's experiences are given to us "solely and almost completely," so that the "gaps are the gaps in Miriam's consciousness, not those of the writer's prejudices..."

Rourke, Constance Mayfield. "Dorothy M. Richardson." New Republic, 20 (26 Nov. 1919): Pt. 2, 14-16.

Review of American editions of Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, and The Tunnel. The first to maintain that although "as mere record, the books are incomparable," they have as well "their many patterns, complex, strong and delicate, which keep emerging like outlines in transparencies."

"Pilgrimage." Nation, 109 (6 Dec. 1919): 720-721.
Rev. of US editions of Pointed Roofs, Backwater, Honeycomb, The Tunnel.It is a great pity that Miss Richardson has chosen so extreme a method for her art...because her native qualities are of the highest." Wants to be told and shown things, and hopes that further volumes will satisfy in these respects, but asserts that to wait for the successive novels will be one of the "fascinating literary adventures of the present."

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2.1.5. Interim (1919)

"New Novels. Interim." Times Literary Supplement, 18 (18 Dec. 1919): 766.
The "charm" of Miriam, which is also DMR's "peculiar quality," lies in an "intense realization of the moment"; whether or not a "finished picture" emerges, "the failure in itself would be interesting." Indeed the "attempt" is already "bringing much enjoyment on the way."

M[ansfield], K[atherine]. "Dragonflies." Athenaeum, 4680 (9 Jan. 1920): 48.
DMR "leaves us feeling, as before, that everything being of equal importance to her, it is impossible that everything should not be of equal unimportance."

"Novels." London Mercury, 1 (Feb. 1920): 473-474.
Expresses certainty that DMR is "genuine," that she writes as she must, that her books are not "stunts," and that because they are documents containing her "description" of "how the world appears to her" rather than novels, the critic is disarmed: "he cannot assume the conventional position of judgment from a definite and unalterable standard."

"Latest Works of Fiction." New York Times Book Review, (20 June 1920): 320.
Admits reluctantly that DMR has "talent," but her heroine is not "particularly interesting" and this novel would be "probably... almost unintelligible" to those who have not a "close acquaintance" with the others.

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2.1.6. Deadlock. (1921)

"Deadlock." Times Literary Supplement, 24 Feb. 1921: 123.
In this novel "there is progress in mere fact" and in the "being" of the heroine, but Deadlock also contains "episodes and passages of richer beauty than in any of the previous books."

"Fiction. Miss Richardson's New Novel." Spectator, 4839 (26 Mar. 1921): 403.
Whether or not one is irritated by DMR's style, none of her books can be read and disregarded. Suggests that she add to Deadlock "an appendix, a little 'argument' which will tell the story of the book" so that one does not miss anything because of the need to "hunt amid her impressions for structural facts."

"Deadlock." Bookman [London], 60 (Apr. 1921): 21.
Notice of publication. "Though the form is materially the same as that of its predecessors, Deadlock bears evidence of a maturer skill, and of a surer handling of English."

Byron, May. "Four New Novels." Bookman [London], 60 (Apr. 1921): 28-29.
States emphatically that when we begin to read the novel, "we know that we shall be surprised, annoyed or gratified, according as Miss Richardson's art affects us - but also that we shall never be bored."

L[ittell], P[hilip]. "Books and Things." New Republic, 26 (27 Apr. 1921): 267.
His "belief in Miriam is absolute," and the "only drawback" of DMR's "already famous method which shuts us up in Miriam's consciousness" is that" it leaves one wondering, foolishly, how Pilgrimage can ever come to an end."

"Varnish." Nation and Athenaeum, 29 (23 July 1921): 621-622.
Reluctantly testifies that Deadlock, through no fault of the material," is "dull": DMR "records like a clock rather than like a consciousness, treating the dull and the exciting moments of l ife with equal emphasis."

Hunt, Una. "Deadlock." New Republic, 29 (8 Feb. 1922): 313-314.
Tries to explain the nature of the "intense excitement [felt] in reading this novel," and why it seems to be "an experience rather than a book." The changes of scene which must be "inferred" and the shifting of characters that must be assumed are "like the changes in a dream."

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2.1.7. Revolving Lights.(1923)

"New Novels. Revolving Lights." Times Literary Supplement, 19 Apr. 1923: 266.
Although readers must know Deadlock in order to understand its successor, Revolving Lights. this novel nevertheless clearly illustrates DMR's "power and art of description."

[Woolf, Virginia.] "Romance and the Heart." Nation and Athenaeum, 19 May 1923: n.pag.
Review of Romer Wilson's The Grand Tour and DMR's Revolving Lights.

Priestley, J.B. "Fiction." London Mercury, 8 (June 1923): 208-210.
Reviews not only DMR's Revolving Lights but also The Clockwork Man by her brother-in-law, Edwin Odle, as well as Beresford's Love's Pilgrim and Romer Wilson's The Grand Tour. Of DMR, says that "one half her time [she] is a kind of essayist, really bent on giving her own views of the relations of the sexes and what not, and not an novelist anxious to show us a certain character." Bemoans the "entire lack of any kind of construction" and the length of the novels. Expresses the certainty that Richardson and Clarissa "are going to be hopelessly out-talked" by DMR and Miriam, but maintains that DMR has the ability to record succinctly her very acute observations.

"Proust, Joyce, and Miss Richardson." Spectator, 130 (30 June 1923): 1084-1085.
Decides that DMR's work "much more closely resembles" Joyce's than Proust's, but "each of us has a tract in his personality which corresponds to that treated by each of these authors..." DMR, for example, "passive and still, sinks through events and states of mind quiet and dumb, and in this ecstasy of listening and waiting she reaches a layer of personality which is different to that either of Mr. James Joyce or M. Proust."

Miles, Hamish. "A Long Lane. Revolving Lights." Evening Post Literary Review [New York], 28 July 1923: 859.
Emphasizes DMR's "remarkable sense of the character and influence of places" as not simply "a gift for 'local color'" but rather the "astonishing power of conveying the peculiar atmosphere" of a district or a street. In this novel, "she catches almost intangible traits of the innermost character of London."

"Latest Works of Fiction. Revolving Lights." New York Times Book Review, 5 Aug. 1923: 24.
Pilgrimage was "originally fresh and strikingly realistic," but it has since become repetitious, with the heroine developing "but little."

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2.1.8. The Trap. (1925)

C[hevalley], A[bel]. The Trap." Vient de Paraître [Paris], Aug. 1925: 432.
Firmly believes that DMR can be parodied with ease, but copied of modelled after only with difficulty.

"Much Ado About Little." New York Times Book Review, 30 Aug. 1925: 9, 22.
Complains not only of the expectation on the part of DMR that her readers "remember perfectly and in detail" the earlier books, but also of her "wearisomely familiar manner."

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2.1.9. Oberland. (1927)

"Oberland Is a Novel of Quiet but Dazzling Beauty." New York Times Book Review, 11 Mar. 1928: 7.
Finds in the novel a "rare...quietly dazzling beauty."

Stern, G.B. "Saga Novels and Miss Richardson." New York Herald Tribune Books, 11 Mar. 1928: 1, 6-7.
Labels Pilgrimage a "saga", which he defines as a "processional narrative where the same characters are lifted on from book to book," insists that a saga should be an "enrichment of history" and should not contain descriptions of a state of mind," and concludes therefrom that Pilgrimage is a poor saga.

Aldrich, Earl A. "The Vista of the Stream." Saturday Review of Literature [New York], 4 (5 May 1928): 841.
Can see Oberland only as "intensely vivid" impressionism, not as a novel, for it lacks "plot", "characters," "setting," a "middle," and possible an "end."

Aiken, Conrad. "Dorothy Richardson Pieces Out The Stream of Consciousness of Her Pilgrim, Miriam Henderson." New York Evening Post, Sec. 3 12 May 1928: 9. Rpt. in A Reviewer's ABC: Collected Criticism of Conrad Aiken from 1916 to the Present. Introd. by Rufus A. Blanchard. New York: Meridian, 1958: 329-31.
In reviewing Oberland as a "charming light interlude" in the series, discusses as well the whole of Pilgrimage. Points out the historic importance of DMR and the "debt in technique and tone" owed to her by Joyce, Virginia Woolf, May Sinclair, and Ford Madox Ford. Attempts to explain why she is so "curiously little known," and offers the following reasons: her "minute recording" which tires those who want action; her choice of a woman's mind as center; and her heroine's lack of "charm."

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2.1.10. Dawn's Left Hand. (1931)

Herbert, Alice. "Novels of the Week." Yorkshire Post [Leeds], 11 Nov. 1931: n.pag.

E., B. I. "Miriam Again." Manchester Guardian, 20 Nov. 1931: 5.
Admires DMR for "never" having been "betrayed into writing merely to display her technical virtuosity," and for an "artistry" that is "certain and direct." Her "individual comments" are so wise as to warrant collection 'For the sake of those who have not the patience to follow her whole work."

Fraser, Ronald. "Dawn's Left Hand." Time and Tide, 21 Nov. 1931: n.pag.

"The Psychology of Miriam." Punch 181 (2 Dec. 1931): 615-616.
Regrets not knowing the earlier books in the series, but praises Dawn's Left Hand as "an adventure in thought."

West, Rebecca. "Dawn's Left Hand." Daily Telegraph, 4 Dec. 1931: n.pag.

B[ryher], W[inifred]. "Dawn's Left Hand." Close-Up, 8 (Dec. 1931): 337-338.
DMR's books should be made into a film. In this volume particularly, "each page [creates] an aspect of London...that like an image from a film, substitutes itself for memory, to revolve before the eyes as we read."

"The Best Fiction." Cape Times [Cape Town], 23 Jan. 1932: n.pag.

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2.1.11. Clear Horizon. (1935)

"New Novels. Miss Richardson's Miriam Again." Times [London], 22 Oct. 1935: 22.
Emphasises DMR's "gusto.. .for intense appreciation of the quality of life..."

Scott-James, R.A. "New Literature. Quintessential Feminism." London Mercury, 33 (Dec. 1935): 201-203.
The chief value of Pilgrimage is its revelation of the feminine point of view, its exhibition of the "feminine mind in operation" - perceiving and analyzing the quality of single successive moments. Her purpose was ideally served by the "technique" of "recording the unordered flow of impressions." Thus she managed to avoid the artistic requisite of structure. [Gentlemanly critical, but also rather captious. Complains, for example, that the novels reveal not the slightest effects of the war upon the mind of the author, thus forgetting that in the time-scheme of Pilgrimage World War I was still in the future.]

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2.1.12. Pilgrimage. 4 vols. (1938)

Church, Richard. "An Essay in Estimation of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage." Pilgrimage: The Life Work of Dorothy Richardson. J.M. Dent & Cresset Press, [1938]: 3-11.
Publisher's brochure. Announcing the publication of the 4-vol. ed. Church describes Pilgrimage as "a serial fiction reflecting the figures of [DMR's] own world as they moved through the years," and quotes from those "fellow-writers" who have recognised a "scrupulous artist": J.D. Beresford, H.G. Wells, May Sinclair, Hugh Walpole (all q.v.), and others.

"Knopf Issues Complete Richardson Work." Publisher's Weekly, 134 (26 Nov. 1938): 1903. Notice of publication.
Announcing the American "omnibus" edition, gives the publishing history of Pilgrimage in this country, and describes DMR as "one of those writes who has achieved a high reputation -and no sales."

"Cagey Subconsciousness." Time, 32 (5 Dec. 1938): 70.
Stridently critical of the novel, asserting that its "fatal flaw showed from the start: a reticence as amazing as Proust's and Joyce's candour."

Rosenfeld, Paul. 'The Inner Life." Saturday Review of Literature [New York], 19 (10 Dec. 1938): 6.
Beginning with Interim, "one feels the effects of a craft-interest in the solutions by Joyce and Proust of problems similar to her own," but "her method was spontaneous in herself. And she has become one of its foremost subtilizers and refiners." However, there is no "hierarchy of values" in Pilgrimage, which "in point of form and of meaning [is] a picaresque novel."

"Novels of the Week. Dorothy Richardson." Times Literary Supplement, 17 Dec. 1938: 799.
States that DMR is "singularly uncompromising in her pursuit of reality."

Scott-James, R.A. "New Literature. Journey Without End." London Mercury, 33 (Dec. 1938):214-215.
Speaking of Dimple Hill, the 12th and supposedly last volume of Pilgrimage, says that "for those who have the patience to read it, it is beautifully proportioned and nonetheless complete because it leads us nowhere."

Deutsch, Babette. "Adventure in Awareness." Nation [New York], 148 (18 Feb. 1939): 210, 212.
Mary Olivier [by May Sinclair] "is a condensed and somewhat vulgarised version of what Miss Richardson has done with exquisite subtlety on a major scale": the volumes of Pilgrimage "perform the supreme service of literature, that of increasing consciousness, even when they seem to deal with trivia." Insists that DMR has mistakenly been called a feminist, that "what she has actually produced is the history of a woman's mind, in the fullest sense of that word."

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2.1.13. Pilgrimage. 4 vols. (1967)

Berridge, Elizabeth. "Novelist of the New Woman." Daily Telegraph [London], 23 March 1967: 21.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage. The first two volumes (containing five novels from Pointed Roofs through Interim) are "fascinating to the modern reader" for their recreation of "the pioneer life of a bachelor working-girl" - "one of Shaw's 'new women'" - and their "immediacy," but the last two volumes are full of an "earnest sentimentality [which] defeats sensibility."

Urquhart, Fred. "Last Words on A Heroine". Oxford Mail 6 April 1967.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage: 'Dorothy Richardson's stream of consciousness is never as difficult as Joyce's and her ear for the seemingly meaningless prattle and chatter of the people, for the nuances of speech among the different social "classes" of the period, was and is unrivalled. Nobody interested in the art of the novel can afford to miss reading her.'

Ricks, Christopher. "Powerful Cross-Current." Sunday Times [London], 23 April 1967: 50.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage. Pilgrimage "is an era (1890-1915) animated by Miriam's participation," and "a classic study of memory."

Wilson, Angus. "Feminine in-fighter." Observer [London], 2 April 1967: 27.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage. "Her poetry is intermittent; she lacks discipline; her longeurs are disturbingly lifeless...but when she lets herself go...she can cut in and out with memory and consciousness and dream with an entirely exciting dexterity." Indeed, "she is among the very top second grade [of novelists]. Which is after all, quite something."

Pritchett, V.S. "Moral Gymnasium." New Statesman, 73 (5 May 1967): 619.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage. Pointed Roofs is "a little masterpiece" which DMR "never equalled." In the rest of Pilgrimage she laboured, intellectualised, changed her mind, and was pretentious. For basically, though she had "talent," she did not have the "genius and certainty of performers" that Proust, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf had. [On the whole, rather strident.]

Edel, Leon. "She Was an Edwardian Camera." Saturday Review [New York], 50 (12 Aug. 1967): 29-30.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage and Horace Gregory's book, Dorothy Richardson: An Adverture in Self-Discovery (1967). Gregory's "portrait in miniature" of DMR is also a "valuable appraisal" of Pilgrimage, and the reissue provides the welcome opportunity to give DMR "that 'second look' which the seriously committed writer always deserves after his life's work is done." For "if Dorothy Richardson was neither as revolutionary as Joyce nor as disciplined and as brilliant as Virginia Woolf, she nevertheless demonstrated that the novel of sensibility could be cast in artistic form, and given artistic validity." [The accompanying photograph is not of DMR but of the American novelist of the same name.]

Bogan, Louise. "Dorothy Richardson and Miriam Henderson." New York Times Book Review, 27 August 1967: 4-5.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage and Gregory, Dorothy Richardson: An Adventure in Self-Discovery (1967). DMR is in "the Bronte tradition," as one of the 19th century Englishwomen "who were learning to cast brave and penetrating glances into their surroundings and into their own hearts." She was "recording feminine heroism as well as feminine insight and subjective perception." Furthermore she deserves credit for "two innovations": using "Henry James's viewpoint person;" and making "that person - unchangeably - a woman; herself at one remove." Gregory's book is "well-organised and perceptive." [One of the three accompanying photographs, dated c. 1928, is not of DMR but of the American novelist of the same name.]

Murray, Michele. "A Long-Lost Classic Arrives." National Catholic Reporter, 13 Sept. 1967: 9.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage and of Gregory, Dorothy Richardson: An Adverture in Self-Discovery (1967). Gregory provides" a valuable introduction" to a novel that is "one of the true glories of English fiction." "Dorothy Richardson has done what only a handful of novelists have been able to accomplish - sustain a fictional world through many volumes so completely that it remains vivid across the passage of years."

Freedman, Richard. "Dorothy Richardson in Limbo." Nation, 204 (25 Sept. 1967): 280-281.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage and of Gregory, Dorothy Richardson: An Adverture in Self-Discovery (1967). Pilgrimage gives "pleasure" now largely as a "period piece," for "Dorothy Richardson's language is pedestrian and she is totally humorless in the dogged pursuit of the 'important ideas' of her time." Thus the novel "remains a curious monstrosity." Gregory's book is an inflated essay with a "shaky major premise" that DMR and her heroine are "interchangeable."

Ellmann, Mary. "Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage." New Republic, 157 (28 Oct. 1967): 23-25.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage and of Gregory, Dorothy Richardson: An Adverture in Self-Discovery (1967). Gregory's book is a "short sensitive study" providing biographical facts which help to "open" Pilgrimage: they are useful because the novel's "obliquity... is at once fine and frustrating." [On the whole, rather eccentric.]

Bliven, Naomi. "Memoirs of a Travelling Woman." New Yorker, 44 (4 May 1968): 181-186.
Review of reissued Pilgrimage, with notice of Gregory's "useful, concise study" [Dorothy Richardson: An Adverture in Self-Discovery (1967)]. Pilgrimage is "a revelation of personality that is closer to confession than to ordinary autobiography or memoir," and "Miriam's personality is the book's triumph," making the self-portrait which this amounts to a unique one. DMR must have known what she was doing, and intended to give her readers "something like the experience of being Miriam."

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2.1.14. Pilgrimage. (1976)

Tudor, Kathleen. "Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage." Atlantis, 3.1 (1977): 214-218.
Review of the Popular Library reprint.

2.2. Obituaries and Tributes

Obituaries in:
Bristol Evening Post, 17 June 1957: 6;
Cambridge Daily News, 17 June 1957: 11;
Daily Sketch [London], 18 June 1957: 5;
Daily Telegram [London], 18 June 1957: 10;
Evening Chronicle [Newcastle-upon-Tyne], 17 June 1957: 3;
The Times [London], 18 June 1957: 13;
Manchester Guardian, 18 June 1957: 2;
The New York Times, 18 June 1957: 33;
Wilson Library Bulletin, 32 Sept. 1957: 16.

Stanford, Derek. "Dorothy Richardson's Novels." Contemporary Review, 1100 (Aug. 1957): 86-89.
Grants DMR's "achievement in opening new shafts of light on women's mental hinterland," but claims that in Pilgrimage "only women are psychically real," and to read the novel "is to move about inside a cocoon of female subjectivity." Denies to Pilgrimage "perspective" and to DMR "the sense of durable words."

Edel, Leon. "Dorothy M. Richardson, 1882 [sic] -1957." Modern Fiction Studies, 4 (Winter 1958): 165-168.

Glikin [Fromm], Gloria: Literary history "bids fair to use Pilgrimage not so much for its exploration of the inner consciousness as for its vivid portraits of certain identifiable figures and its reflection of a certain era in English life and letters." A "new generation of readers - if there will continue to be readers at all - may truly discover Dorothy Richardson for the first time."

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