Abstract

Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage, a thirteen volume epic novel, was one of the first turn-of-the-century 'experiments' in the stream-of-consciousness. Richardson was a contemporary of Proust, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, who referred to herself as an 'intermittent student' of Richardson's. Richardson also wrote about the early silent cinema for the journal Close Up, published by H.D. Bryher and Macpherson. In her writings on the film, as well as in her novel writing, Richardson explores what she sees as a direct connection between issues of gender and the necessity for formal literary innovation. This book investigates the way in which Richardson's focus on these issues required that she invent new theories of reading and viewing practices, and a new profile for the page of the novel - punctuated and composed as never before.