Dorothy Richardson 1873 – 1957

Dorothy Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction. She was the first writer about whose work the description ‘stream of consciousness’ was used. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States and, Virginia Woolf in England, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature.

A prominent figure in the 1920s, Richardson’s contribution to twentieth-century literature faded from view in the years after the Second World War, returning thanks to the work of feminist scholars in the 1970s. The publication of scholarly editions of her fiction and the Collected Letters will confirm her place amongst her contemporaries and fill a significant gap in literary history.

Three volumes of Richardson’s Collected Letters will be published, 2018-2020 by Oxford University Press. Her long novel, Pilgrimage will be published in six volumes, 2018-2020; and a final volume of her shorter fiction will be published in 2020.