Dorothy
Richardson
in full Dorothy Miller
Richardson, married name Dorothy Odle
born May 17, 1873, Abingdon, Berkshire,
Eng.
died June 17, 1957, Beckenham, Kent
English novelist, an often neglected pioneer
in stream-of-consciousness fiction.
Richardson passed her childhood and youth
in secluded surroundings in late Victorian
England. After her schooling, which ended
when, in her 17th year, her parents
separated, she engaged in teaching, clerical
work, and journalism. In 1917 she married
the artist Alan Elsden Odle. She commands
attention for her ambitious sequence novel
Pilgrimage (published in separate
volumes—she preferred to call them
chapters—as Pointed Roofs, 1915; Backwater,
1916; Honeycomb, 1917; The Tunnel, 1919;
Interim, 1919; Deadlock, 1921; Revolving
Lights, 1923; The Trap, 1925; Oberland,
1927; Dawn’s Left Hand, 1931; Clear Horizon,
1935; the last part, Dimple Hill, appeared
under the collective title, four volumes,
1938).
Pilgrimage is an extraordinarily
sensitive story, seen cinematically through
the eyes of Miriam Henderson, an attractive
and mystical New Woman. Although the length
of the work and the intense demand it makes
on the reader have kept it from general
popularity, it is a significant novel of the
20th century, not least for its attempt to
find new formal means by which to represent
feminine consciousness.
