HERmione

HERmione is an autobiographical novel written by the poet H.D. It forms part of what she refers to as her Madrigal cycle, which also includes Bid Me to Live, Paint it Today and Asphodel.

HERmione

Author	H.D.
Language	English
Genre	Novel, Autobiography
Publisher	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date	1 November 1981
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print Paperback
Pages	256
ISBN	0-8112-0817-6
OCLC	7553331
Dewey Decimal	813/.52 19
LC Class	PS3507.O726 H47 1981

Although written in 1927, it was not published until 1981; this may be due to a lack of confidence in her own writing quality, as H.D. suggested was true of Asphodel, or due to the centrality of her homosexual relationship with Gregg represented in the novel.^[1] While there is no evidence that H.D. attempted to publish the novel, it, along with another autobiographical work The Gift were being prepared for publication at the time of her death in 1961. Her literary executor, Norman Holmes Pearson, had created a typescript of HER which had been heavily revised by H.D.^[2]

In the novel, she represents herself as Hermione Gart, a woman in her twenties, shortly after failing at Bryn Mawr. It includes portraits of poet Ezra Pound (as George Lowndes) and Frances Josepha Gregg (as Fayne Rabb), with both of whom she had relationships.^[3]

References

1. Friedman et al (1990), 206
2. Friedman et al (1990), 208
3. Moody (2007), 180

Sources

• Friedman, Susan Stanford; DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. 'The Sexualities of H.D.'s Her'. Signets:Reading H.D.. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. ISBN 0-299-12680-3
• Moody, A. David. Ezra Pound: Poet. A Portrait of the Man and His Work. I: The Young Genius 1885–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-957146-8

Further reading

• Tyson, Charlie. "H.D.'s Art of Failure". The New Yorker. 21 October 2022. Retrieved 8 April 2023.