A Reader's Guide to Dorothy Richardson's 'Pilgrimage'

George H. Thomson

Publication Year: 1996

Over the years, Pilgrimage (1915-1967) has been viewed as early Modernism's great documentary novel, as daring experimental fiction, as spiritual autobiography and pioneer of cinematographic technique. No matter what critical viewpoint readers use, Pilgrimage's reputation as a demanding text persists. Like James Joyce's Ulysses, Richardson's 2000 intricately woven pages have challenged readers for decades. Reader's Guide meets these difficulties with a detailed account of the time scheme of the narrative, and a precise chronology of events keyed to the novels by page number for easy reference. Relationships among the principal persons of the story are followed throughout, and all the characters are placed in context in an alphabetically arranged descriptive directory. The book concludes with a select annotated secondary bibliography.

Published by: ELT Press

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SEVERAL YEARS AFTER the 1938 "collected" edition of Pilgrimage appeared, Dorothy Richardson was still contemplating improvements for her incomplete, twelve-part novel. In a letter to an admirer, she bemoaned the constraints...

Sources and Acknowledgments

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pp. xii-xiii

I AM GRATEFUL to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, for their assistance and for permission to quote from the following unpublished items from the Richardson Papers: the MS of...

Note on the Text of Pilgrimage

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pp. xiv-

1. Preliminary Propositions

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pp. 1-15

THE READER OF PILGRIMAGE must from time to time need help. That is how I felt each time I read the text. And gradually I came to believe that the need might be met by making more explicit, than Dorothy Richardson had done...

2. Time & Events in Pilgrimage

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pp. 17-56

THE FIRST THREE BOOKS, comprising Volume I, are clear in their time scheme...

3. Pilgrimage: A Chronology

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pp. 57-90

THIS ACCOUNT MAY SERVE as a model for the reading of Pilgrimage. Our experience of the text accumulates and crystallizes as we read. And after we have read, the text becomes itself the Record of our enriched experience...

4. Pilgrimage: A Directory of Characters

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pp. 91-143

THE 608 ENTRIES in this directory include all persons cited in the text, even those who appear once only, so long as they are rendered with some descriptive detail. Those merely mentioned, 244, are excluded, except for approximately...

5. Select Bibliography

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pp. 145-169

Notes

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pp. 170-

E-ISBN-13: 9780944318515
Print-ISBN-13: 9780944318515
Print-ISBN-10: 094431810X

Page Count: 192
Publication Year: 1996

Series Title: 1880-1920 British Authors Series