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Pilgrimage #10
Dawn's Left Hand: Pilgrimage, Volume 10
"Dawn's Left Pilgrimage, Volume 10" invites readers to embark on a captivating literary pilgrimage, where the boundaries between the physical and spiritual realms blur, and the journey of self-discovery unfolds with grace and insight. Crafted by a masterful storyteller, this novel continues the compelling narrative of the protagonist's quest for meaning, transformation, and connection. Set against a backdrop of diverse landscapes and cultural encounters, the narrative unfurls as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. The author's lyrical prose and evocative descriptions create a vivid tapestry, allowing readers to traverse the internal landscapes of the characters with intimate clarity.
- GenresClassics
163 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1931
About the author
Dorothy M. Richardson
47 books67 followersDorothy Miller Richardson
Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883. At seventeen, because of her father's financial difficulties she went to work as a governess and teacher, first in 1891 for six months at a finishing school in Germany. In 1895 Richardson gave up work as a governess to take care of her severely depressed mother, but her mother committed suicide the same year. Richardson's father had become bankrupt at the end of 1893.
Richardson subsequently moved in 1896 to Bloomsbury, London, where she worked as a receptionist/secretary/assistant in a Harley Street dental surgery. While in Bloomsbury in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Richardson associated with writers and radicals, including the Bloomsbury Group. H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was a friend and they had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and then miscarriage, in 1907. While she had first published an article in 1902, Richardson's writing career, as a freelance journalist really began around 1906, with periodical articles on various topics, book reviews, short stories, and poems, as well as translation from German and French. During this period she became interested in the Quakers and published two books relating to them in 1914.
In 1915 Richardson published her first novel Pointed Roofs, the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. She married the artist Alan Odle (1888-1948) in 1917 – a distinctly bohemian figure, who was fifteen years younger than she. From 1917 until 1939 the couple spent their winters in Cornwall and their summers in London, and then stayed permanently in Cornwall until Odle’s death in 1948. She supported herself and her husband with freelance writing for periodicals for many years. In 1954, she had to move into a nursing home in the London suburb of Beckenham, Kent, where she died, forgotten, alone and ignored, in 1957.
Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States and, in England, Virginia Woolf, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature. The first ‘chapter’ of her long work, Pilgrimage, was begun in 1912 - a year before the publication of the first volume of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, two years before the first appearance of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and seven years before Woolf’s first experimental novel Jacob’s Room.
Richardson also published short stories in a variety of periodicals (a collection was published by Virago in 1989) and a handful of poems. She was the author of numerous articles in periodicals such as Adelphi and Vanity Fair. She began her literary career reviewing for the vegetarian journal, Crank. Between 1912 and 1921, she wrote a regular column, ‘Comments by a Layman’, for the Dental Record. She translated eight books into English from French and German. Between 1927 and 1933 she published 23 articles on film in the avant-garde little magazine, Close Up.
Richardson’s aesthetic was influenced by diverse currents of thought. She was part of the alternative, bohemian culture at the turn of the century that embraced vegetarianism, feminism and socialism. Olive Schreiner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman made an early impact on her work and one of her first reviews was of a book by the advocate for homosexual rights, utopian socialist, and Whitmanite poet, Edward Carpenter.
If you are interested, please join the Goodreads group on her that can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883. At seventeen, because of her father's financial difficulties she went to work as a governess and teacher, first in 1891 for six months at a finishing school in Germany. In 1895 Richardson gave up work as a governess to take care of her severely depressed mother, but her mother committed suicide the same year. Richardson's father had become bankrupt at the end of 1893.
Richardson subsequently moved in 1896 to Bloomsbury, London, where she worked as a receptionist/secretary/assistant in a Harley Street dental surgery. While in Bloomsbury in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Richardson associated with writers and radicals, including the Bloomsbury Group. H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was a friend and they had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and then miscarriage, in 1907. While she had first published an article in 1902, Richardson's writing career, as a freelance journalist really began around 1906, with periodical articles on various topics, book reviews, short stories, and poems, as well as translation from German and French. During this period she became interested in the Quakers and published two books relating to them in 1914.
In 1915 Richardson published her first novel Pointed Roofs, the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. She married the artist Alan Odle (1888-1948) in 1917 – a distinctly bohemian figure, who was fifteen years younger than she. From 1917 until 1939 the couple spent their winters in Cornwall and their summers in London, and then stayed permanently in Cornwall until Odle’s death in 1948. She supported herself and her husband with freelance writing for periodicals for many years. In 1954, she had to move into a nursing home in the London suburb of Beckenham, Kent, where she died, forgotten, alone and ignored, in 1957.
Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States and, in England, Virginia Woolf, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature. The first ‘chapter’ of her long work, Pilgrimage, was begun in 1912 - a year before the publication of the first volume of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, two years before the first appearance of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and seven years before Woolf’s first experimental novel Jacob’s Room.
Richardson also published short stories in a variety of periodicals (a collection was published by Virago in 1989) and a handful of poems. She was the author of numerous articles in periodicals such as Adelphi and Vanity Fair. She began her literary career reviewing for the vegetarian journal, Crank. Between 1912 and 1921, she wrote a regular column, ‘Comments by a Layman’, for the Dental Record. She translated eight books into English from French and German. Between 1927 and 1933 she published 23 articles on film in the avant-garde little magazine, Close Up.
Richardson’s aesthetic was influenced by diverse currents of thought. She was part of the alternative, bohemian culture at the turn of the century that embraced vegetarianism, feminism and socialism. Olive Schreiner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman made an early impact on her work and one of her first reviews was of a book by the advocate for homosexual rights, utopian socialist, and Whitmanite poet, Edward Carpenter.
If you are interested, please join the Goodreads group on her that can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 10, 2015
Tenth in the Pilgrimage series. Miriam moves back to her old lodgings. However the bulk of the novel focuses on Miriam’s relationship with two people. Hypo Wilson (based on H G Wells) with whom she has an affair and a young woman called Amabel who falls in love with Miriam and with whom she has an intense relationship. Wilson is a rationalist who believes in free love and in socialism. Miriam finds him stimulating intellectually; attractive at a cerebral level, but not physically attractive. Amabel and Miriam’s relationship with her is much freer and more fluid. Richardson was writing this at about the time of Radclyffe Hall’s trial for obscenity.
Miriam begins to view herself on a different way as a result of these relationships;
“With the eyes of Amabel, and with her own eyes opened by Amabel, she saw the long honey-coloured ropes of hair framing the face […] falling across her shoulders and along her body where the last foot of their length, red-gold, gleamed marvellously against the rose-tinted velvety gleaming of her flesh. Saw the lines and curves of her limbs, their balance and harmony. Impersonally beautiful and inspiring.”
She also resists Wilson’s attempts to turn her into his type of female novelist and he also imagines her with a child, which she also resists. She even argues with Hypo about the nature of the novel;
“The torment of all novels is what is left out. The moment you are aware of it, there is torment in them. Bang, bang, bang, on they go, these men’s books, like an LCC tram, yet unable to make you forget them, the authors, for a moment.”
Richardson is reimagining the novel in Pilgrimage and now she is channelling her ideas through Miriam. It is as Richardson said herself “a feminine equivalent of the current masculine realism” (Richardson was referring to Wells, Conrad and Bennett).
As with the previous novels, there is very little going on; we are following Miriam in her thoughts and feelings. Unlike Oberland this one is very much grounded in the previous books. The novels seem to be getting shorter now; almost snapshots of a brief period; but the standard still remains high.
Miriam begins to view herself on a different way as a result of these relationships;
“With the eyes of Amabel, and with her own eyes opened by Amabel, she saw the long honey-coloured ropes of hair framing the face […] falling across her shoulders and along her body where the last foot of their length, red-gold, gleamed marvellously against the rose-tinted velvety gleaming of her flesh. Saw the lines and curves of her limbs, their balance and harmony. Impersonally beautiful and inspiring.”
She also resists Wilson’s attempts to turn her into his type of female novelist and he also imagines her with a child, which she also resists. She even argues with Hypo about the nature of the novel;
“The torment of all novels is what is left out. The moment you are aware of it, there is torment in them. Bang, bang, bang, on they go, these men’s books, like an LCC tram, yet unable to make you forget them, the authors, for a moment.”
Richardson is reimagining the novel in Pilgrimage and now she is channelling her ideas through Miriam. It is as Richardson said herself “a feminine equivalent of the current masculine realism” (Richardson was referring to Wells, Conrad and Bennett).
As with the previous novels, there is very little going on; we are following Miriam in her thoughts and feelings. Unlike Oberland this one is very much grounded in the previous books. The novels seem to be getting shorter now; almost snapshots of a brief period; but the standard still remains high.
Read
October 3, 2016The tenth of the thirteen volume series of novels that Dorothy Richardson titled ‘Pilgrimage’ – picks up the story of Miriam Henderson exactly where the ninth ended. She is on a train, travelling home, after a two week holiday in Switzerland.
She is happy and confident throughout that journey; but when she arrives back in London it seems that little had changed. She is still working at Mr Hancock’s dental practice; and she is still sharing a room with Miss Selina Hastings,back on friendly terms, or at least having reached an accommodation, after their relationship seemed have reached breaking-point at the end of the book before last.
Things are happening though, and things will change.
Much of this book follows Miriam as he encounters and she thinks about many of the people who have passed through her life. It might have been a test to see how much I remembered. She visited Dr Densley, who had become a suitor after that met when Miss Eleanor Dear was his patient. There were aspects of the life of a doctor’s wife that appealed to Miriam, but whem her thoughts suddenly shifted it was clear that she did not see her future there. Miss Dear herself had died. The Brooms, who Miriam came to know at her second teaching post, who she had visited often, were still in her life; as was Sissie Bailey, her former landlady who I am sure hadn’t been mentioned since Miriam, for reasons that were never made clear, left her boarding house.
What was telling was what wasn’t mentioned. The setting – London – had always been at the centre of Miriam’s thoughts, but now it seemed to be taken for granted. Maybe that, maybe the tour of friends and acquaintances was suggesting that Miriam was preparing to move, to change her life.
Michael Shatov was also absent, probably because two other relationships were central to this part of Miriam’s story.
When she was in Oberland Miriam had know that, back in London, Hyppo Wilson was waiting for her to make a decision. It was unsaid, but it was clear what that meant, and when she came home to a letter professing love any element of doubt was gone. The relationship was consummated. Miriam had felt no physical attraction, but otherwise her feelings remained opaque.
The pattern of the relationship was so familiar though; an intellectual bond, pushed into something else by a male who had to be dominant, not realising that he might be changing everything …
Meanwhile, Miriam was being pursued by a bright young woman – who even went into her room to write ‘I love you’ on her mirror. She was intrigued, she was flattered, but she was unsure of what it might all mean.
All of these different things came together to make a book that felt rather muddled and messy. There was much to hold the interest; but there was a lack of shape to this chapter of Miriam’s story, and that bothered me. It didn’t help that the steam of consciousness often seemed more random and less penetrable than it had before.
The last chapter went some way to redeeming things.
Miriam was spending a weekend at the country home of Hyppo and Alma Wilson. It was clear that Alma was either blind to the relationship between her husband and her friend, or that she was choosing to ignore it. Her brightness suggested the latter, and that she knew her husband’s foibles and understood and would maintain her position. That helped Miriam to understand her own position, and time and space in the country allowed her to think over may things.
She knew at heart that she was just a passing fancy for her young lady admirer. She thought about her sister Eve, who had written to he urging her to break with Hyppo Wilson; I was so pleased that Miriam who often failed to appreciate her sisters came to appreciate that. She thought of her sister Harriet, who had emigrated to Canada and who seemed to be making a success of her new life. Maybe that gave her food for thought.
Certainly she loved being in the country, and there was some lovely prose.
There were some rather odd passages, but I think that was when Miriam fell ill and so I am going to overlook them. I’ve learned that I have to do that sometimes, otherwise I would be completely bogged down, trying to understand things that Dorothy Richardson – through Miriam’s sub-conscious – will never make clear.
Over the course of the book it became clear that Miriam had matured, that she had a greater sense of who she was as a woman, in relationships and in the world,
And at the end it was clear that she had gained understanding, maybe made some decisions; because she seemed happier and more purposeful than she had for some time.
I do hope that will herald a new direction, that the next book will show that she has made decisions and is going to act upon them.
Miriam Henderson and Dorothy Richardson can both be infuriating; but they can also be inspiring, and ‘Pilgrimage’ is like nothing else I have ever read.
I’ll be glad to reach the end, but when I reach the end I want to read more about Dorothy Richardson and understand how she drew on life, how she came to write as she did, and why she chose to devote as much of her life as she could to writing about one woman’s consciousness.
I want to understand why things are moving so slowly at a point in Dorothy Richardson’s life when there was so much she might have written about in between her present and the point Miriam had reached in life.
And I want to go on because the way she wrote and what she did in these sequence of novels is extraordinary.
The next book – a very short book – is already in my sights
She is happy and confident throughout that journey; but when she arrives back in London it seems that little had changed. She is still working at Mr Hancock’s dental practice; and she is still sharing a room with Miss Selina Hastings,back on friendly terms, or at least having reached an accommodation, after their relationship seemed have reached breaking-point at the end of the book before last.
Things are happening though, and things will change.
Much of this book follows Miriam as he encounters and she thinks about many of the people who have passed through her life. It might have been a test to see how much I remembered. She visited Dr Densley, who had become a suitor after that met when Miss Eleanor Dear was his patient. There were aspects of the life of a doctor’s wife that appealed to Miriam, but whem her thoughts suddenly shifted it was clear that she did not see her future there. Miss Dear herself had died. The Brooms, who Miriam came to know at her second teaching post, who she had visited often, were still in her life; as was Sissie Bailey, her former landlady who I am sure hadn’t been mentioned since Miriam, for reasons that were never made clear, left her boarding house.
What was telling was what wasn’t mentioned. The setting – London – had always been at the centre of Miriam’s thoughts, but now it seemed to be taken for granted. Maybe that, maybe the tour of friends and acquaintances was suggesting that Miriam was preparing to move, to change her life.
Michael Shatov was also absent, probably because two other relationships were central to this part of Miriam’s story.
When she was in Oberland Miriam had know that, back in London, Hyppo Wilson was waiting for her to make a decision. It was unsaid, but it was clear what that meant, and when she came home to a letter professing love any element of doubt was gone. The relationship was consummated. Miriam had felt no physical attraction, but otherwise her feelings remained opaque.
The pattern of the relationship was so familiar though; an intellectual bond, pushed into something else by a male who had to be dominant, not realising that he might be changing everything …
Meanwhile, Miriam was being pursued by a bright young woman – who even went into her room to write ‘I love you’ on her mirror. She was intrigued, she was flattered, but she was unsure of what it might all mean.
All of these different things came together to make a book that felt rather muddled and messy. There was much to hold the interest; but there was a lack of shape to this chapter of Miriam’s story, and that bothered me. It didn’t help that the steam of consciousness often seemed more random and less penetrable than it had before.
The last chapter went some way to redeeming things.
Miriam was spending a weekend at the country home of Hyppo and Alma Wilson. It was clear that Alma was either blind to the relationship between her husband and her friend, or that she was choosing to ignore it. Her brightness suggested the latter, and that she knew her husband’s foibles and understood and would maintain her position. That helped Miriam to understand her own position, and time and space in the country allowed her to think over may things.
She knew at heart that she was just a passing fancy for her young lady admirer. She thought about her sister Eve, who had written to he urging her to break with Hyppo Wilson; I was so pleased that Miriam who often failed to appreciate her sisters came to appreciate that. She thought of her sister Harriet, who had emigrated to Canada and who seemed to be making a success of her new life. Maybe that gave her food for thought.
Certainly she loved being in the country, and there was some lovely prose.
There were some rather odd passages, but I think that was when Miriam fell ill and so I am going to overlook them. I’ve learned that I have to do that sometimes, otherwise I would be completely bogged down, trying to understand things that Dorothy Richardson – through Miriam’s sub-conscious – will never make clear.
Over the course of the book it became clear that Miriam had matured, that she had a greater sense of who she was as a woman, in relationships and in the world,
And at the end it was clear that she had gained understanding, maybe made some decisions; because she seemed happier and more purposeful than she had for some time.
I do hope that will herald a new direction, that the next book will show that she has made decisions and is going to act upon them.
Miriam Henderson and Dorothy Richardson can both be infuriating; but they can also be inspiring, and ‘Pilgrimage’ is like nothing else I have ever read.
I’ll be glad to reach the end, but when I reach the end I want to read more about Dorothy Richardson and understand how she drew on life, how she came to write as she did, and why she chose to devote as much of her life as she could to writing about one woman’s consciousness.
I want to understand why things are moving so slowly at a point in Dorothy Richardson’s life when there was so much she might have written about in between her present and the point Miriam had reached in life.
And I want to go on because the way she wrote and what she did in these sequence of novels is extraordinary.
The next book – a very short book – is already in my sights
Read
October 24, 2020Miriam Henderson’s journey continues, back in England after a two-week vacation in Switzerland. The inability of men and women to communicate remains a major theme. The character of Amabel loiters with intent like an Albertine. And the POV continues to shift, mostly restricted to 1st and 3rd limited, but one sometimes loses track of when Miriam is “she” and when she is “I”. Like it’s predecessors in the series, at once unique but hard to like.
February 10, 2026
Apparently everybody knows what's happening in this one (and a lot is happening), except for me, because it's the only time I didn't start reading the next book by first reading the synopsis. Well: it's a lot. But in all honesty, even being on part 10 out of 13, I would've missed the main event if I hadn't finally read an introduction to Dawn's Left Hand and then the synopsis just before finishing it.
More importantly than THAT though, and unmissable: Amabel and the power she holds over Miriam, absolutely delightful.
And on top of that there's one of the most evocative and interesting passages of the entire series: Miriam remembering how one insufferably hot summer weekend she ditched the Perne sisters and spent the weekend with Jan and Mag instead, on very short notice. The spontaneity and callousness of friendship, the freedom that comes from recklessness, the sweetness of following one's impulses, and the bliss of being rewarded for it: it's just marvelous, so summery and brutal. It would've been so nice and cool at the Pernes' in the suburbs, but who wouldn't have wanted to spend the weekend with Jan and Mag in their tiny hot flat instead.
More importantly than THAT though, and unmissable: Amabel and the power she holds over Miriam, absolutely delightful.
And on top of that there's one of the most evocative and interesting passages of the entire series: Miriam remembering how one insufferably hot summer weekend she ditched the Perne sisters and spent the weekend with Jan and Mag instead, on very short notice. The spontaneity and callousness of friendship, the freedom that comes from recklessness, the sweetness of following one's impulses, and the bliss of being rewarded for it: it's just marvelous, so summery and brutal. It would've been so nice and cool at the Pernes' in the suburbs, but who wouldn't have wanted to spend the weekend with Jan and Mag in their tiny hot flat instead.
January 26, 2020
Fascinating - author tries to convey how she felt, what it was like to be at the theatre with HG Wellls and his wife, at a Fabian Society meeting, as a poor woman fending for herself in Edwardian London.
July 11, 2017
me, the whole way through this: DO NOT FUCK HIM MIRIAM. DO NOT.
although thinking abt it, that's what i've been saying the whole series about like 10 different dudes.
although thinking abt it, that's what i've been saying the whole series about like 10 different dudes.
April 26, 2022
Re-read for Pilgrimage online discussion group.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews