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October 31, 2018 10:46 AM

Complete, proofread eTexts of Dorothy Richardson's 13-volume Pilgrimage now available

Some of the chapters have been long out of print (but check out those '70s covers).

Neglected Books' introductory post to Pilgrimage (all posts)
Interview with literary historian Kate Macdonald
Dorothy Richardson Blog

posted by edeezy (9 comments total)

Never heard of these books, am very interested to check them out. Thank you for posting.
posted by Fizz at 10:54 AM on October 31, 2018

Thank you; this is a wonderful post. I'm definitely going to give the books a try, although I am sad that I won't be reading the '70s editions.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 11:14 AM on October 31, 2018

from the linked Interview -- It was obvious when Hypo Wilson appeared that he was Wells: such an opinionated, obnoxious little man.
posted by clew at 1:03 PM on October 31, 2018

Thanks for this post! It's all new to me!

And the proofread edition is thanks to the hard work of the volunteers of Distributed Proofreaders Canada (Canada has a more reasonable 50 year lifespan for most copyrights, compared to 70, 95, or 120 years for U.S. copyrights, depending on authorship).

The briefest introduction to Dorothy Richardson's 13 volumes I could find was this one from Neglected Books:

I personally think that all self-respecting adult males should be required to read Pilgrimage, as it will immerse them as no other text into the world as seen through a woman’s eyes. As Richardson wrote in the Foreword to the 1938 J. M. Dent edition of the first 12 volumes,

… the present writer, proposing at this moment to write a novel and looking round for a contemporary pattern, was faced with the choice between following one of her regiments and attempting to produce a feminine equivalent of the current masculine realism….

In 1913, the opening pages of the attempted chronicle became the first chapter of ‘Pilgrimage,’ written to the accompaniment of a sense of being upon a fresh pathway, an adventure so searching and, sometimes, so joyous as to produce a longing for participation; not quite the some as a longing for publication, whose possibility, indeed, as the book grew, receded to vanishing point.

...
To paraphrase Charles Ives, When you read strong feminine fiction like this, sit up and USE YOUR EYES LIKE A MAN!

Emphasis mine -- I included the quote from Richardson herself for further context. And another review-snippet from another Neglected Books post:

Richardson, asserted Louise Bogan, “is not recounting it to us retrospectively; she is sharing it with us in a kind of continuous present. Not this is the way it was, but this is the way it is.” And it is this quality that makes Pilgrimage vibrant and enthralling reading even a hundred years after it was written.

And if you want something to have and hold, and don't mind waiting a few years to hold them all, the Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project is publishing the complete work, with annotations in six volumes from now through 2020.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:11 PM on October 31, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oo, I have some *other* turn-of-the-last-century-forgotten-modernist-women novels to scan and ... suggest to pgdp, I guess.
posted by clew at 1:14 PM on October 31, 2018

Well, huh. I recently came across Richardson, but it her writings about Quakerism that caught my attention. Will have to try this roman-fleuve-ish thing.
posted by Quasirandom at 1:40 PM on October 31, 2018

Wow! Fabulous!
posted by OmieWise at 7:19 AM on November 1, 2018

Oh, wow, am only partly into the first volume but I love it.

Vilette on the bookshelf the night before leaving for one's impoverished student-teacher job! Puzzling bits of material history! All the thoughts represented! Other women interesting of themselves!
posted by clew at 1:12 PM on November 4, 2018

I have been reading the first one and I find it pretty great. Thanks for posting this!
posted by MrMisterio at 12:17 PM on November 23, 2018