The New York Times Book Review recently ran a review of Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between The Wars, a look at five pioneering feminists including H.D. aka Hilda Doolittle. Doolittle was born in Bethlehem PA, moved to Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby and became part of a literary circle that included U. Penn grad Ezra Pound. She was determined to shake the limitations that contemporary society would have had her exist within and determined to be a “modern woman” and never marry while entering into romantic liasons with both men and women. One of her most serious relations was with Frances Gregg, who she eventually lost to Louis Wilkinson, a long time friend of Aleister Crowley and eventually his literary executor; at one point Doolittle was invited to join Wilkinson and Gregg on their honeymoon but she was talked out of it by Pound – who then went on to marry someone else! Oy! And you thought the last season of the Bachelorette was complicated!
Doolittle published under the name H.D. and her works are striking powerful works steeped in Pagan theology.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/books/review/square-haunting-francesca-wade.html.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/h-d
