Dorothy Richardson: A Biography (review)

186 biography Vol. 2, No. 2 which (if used with caution) could be most useful to the biographer. Ho Chi Minh's bubbles forth wit in his farewell to a lost tooth (p. 80); his strong will is evident in the poems "On the Road" (p. 75) and "A Word to Myself (p. 77); his sensitivity surfaces in "Visiting her husband in Prison" (p. 76) and "Thinking of a Friend" (p. 84). Another poem which consists of a play on words (or, to be precise, on Chinese characters) now reads like a prophecy: "A man once freed from jail, will build his country. Misfortune is the test of loyalty. He earns great merit who feels great concern. Unlock the cage—the true dragon will fly" (pp. 86-87) This is not the first time that Ho Chi Minh's Prison Diary has been translated into English. However, it is the first time that we have such a readable translation of it, thanks to Mr. Huynh Sanh Thong. I was not able to compare his translation with the original—in Chinese—but his version is pleasant, direct and flowing. So is the translation of Phan Boi Chau's work by C. Jenkins and Tran Khanh Tyet. My only criticism concerns the somewhat confused way in which some Chinese personal and geographical names have been transliterated into Vietnamese . Here and there, a reader may get quite lost. Southeast Asian specialists, and other readers as well, should welcome this publication, because although Phan Boi Chau is quite well-known, this is the first time that his writing has been made available in English. Finally, David Marr should be commended for providing the translations with very thoughtful, concise and accurate introductory notes. Truong Buu Lam University of Hawaii Gloria G. Fromm, Dorothy Richardson: A Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. 451 pp. $15.00. Although not without flaws, Dorothy Richardson should stimulate interest in a brilliant novelist who is at last emerging from thirty years of obscurity. The more than ten years that Gloria Fromm devoted to its research are evident in the wealth of details which create a vivid picture of Richardson's life as an independent woman and writer in the early years of the century. Her perceptive analysis of the thirteen volumes of Richardson's largely autobiographical novel, Pilgrimage, is a welcome contrast to the sketchy plot summary in John Rosenberg's REVIEWS 187 earlier biography (Dorothy Richardson: The Genius They Forgot, 1973). In her dual role of biographer and critic Fromm sets out to "examine the facts of [Richardson's] life in conjunction with the fictional shape they took, in an effort to determine the role that imagination played in Pilgrimage and through that get at the art of this novel" (xiii). This insightful approach makes the biography a significant contribution despite the book's limitations. Some of Fromm's facts are trivial. Does it really matter that Richardson 's landlady fed her gulls' eggs? And at times she overdramatizes the insignificant or commonplace. For example, when describing Richardson's combined fascination and horror at the slaughter of two pigs—a predictable reaction for a Londoner—Fromm hints at a dark connection "formed in the recesses of her mind" (207) between the killings and her frustration with dwindling interest in Pilgrimage. But much of the biography supplies valuable new information. With engaging closeness to her subject and to her readers Fromm recreates the turn-of-the-century London with its "infinite variety of revolutionaries and anarchists" (25) which shaped Richardson's ideas. Although she sidesteps a close examination of Richardson's intense emotional attachment to some of the women in her life, her full discussion of Richardson's ambivalent affair with H. G. Wells sheds light on his influence in her life and work. Fromm skillfully portrays Richardson's intense life in two parts: the independent years and the late marriage to artist Alan OdIe, fifteen years her junior. Occasionally she seems to conflate events from the life with the fictionalized version from the novels. But at her best she simply suggests connections and allows readers to trace for themselves the transformation of actual events into fiction. The biography...