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Pilgrimage #9
Oberland
The thirteen magnificent novels that comprise Pilgrimage are the first expression in English of what it is to be called 'stream of consciousness' technique, predating the work of both Joyce and Woolf, echoing that of Proust with whom Dorothy Richardson stands as one of the great innovatory figures of our time. These four volumes record in detail the life of Miriam Henderson. Through her experience - personal, spiritual, intellectual - Dorothy Richardson explores intensely what it means to be a woman, presenting feminine consciousness with a new voice, a new identity.
- GenresClassics
240 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1928
About the author
Dorothy M. Richardson
47 books68 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 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 20, 2015
4.5 stars
This ninth outing of Richardson’s Pilgrimage series is an oddity; a description of a two week holiday Miriam has in Switzerland, in the Alps. It has been titled a “modernist travel narrative”, so if you ever wondered what one of those looks like; here’s your chance.
Viewed as a travelogue, the reader gets a sense of the wonder of new places and new people. This is less about Miriam’s interior life and more about experience of a new place. At the time critics felt that Oberland felt like an interlude and a change in direction, a light interlude, especially as the descriptions of the scenery and snow gives the whole a very “light” feel. The concept of an interlude means there is a before and after. The after involves Hypo Wilson, with whom Miriam is considering whether to have an affair. The holiday is based on a couple of trips Richardson made to Switzerland herself in the early 1900s and it was about this time that this sort of holiday ceased to be the preserve of the very rich and became more accessible to the middles classes and the adventurous.
The holiday is something of a rest cure for Miriam. It was written in 1926 and at that time there was something of a vogue for literature in mountain resorts/ sanatoria. The Magic Mountain was published in 1924 and the climax of Women in Love (Richardson met Lawrence about this time) was set in a mountain resort. In terms of characterisation Richardson sets up, there are the typical English stereotypes who interact with continental stereotypes with Miriam in the middle. The interactions are interesting and Miriam is as perceptive as ever. There are some set piece winter sports events. The whole setting up of Oberland reminded me a little of the way Proust uses the French seaside resorts in his novels.
An interesting interlude which could stand alone as a satire on the English abroad.
This ninth outing of Richardson’s Pilgrimage series is an oddity; a description of a two week holiday Miriam has in Switzerland, in the Alps. It has been titled a “modernist travel narrative”, so if you ever wondered what one of those looks like; here’s your chance.
Viewed as a travelogue, the reader gets a sense of the wonder of new places and new people. This is less about Miriam’s interior life and more about experience of a new place. At the time critics felt that Oberland felt like an interlude and a change in direction, a light interlude, especially as the descriptions of the scenery and snow gives the whole a very “light” feel. The concept of an interlude means there is a before and after. The after involves Hypo Wilson, with whom Miriam is considering whether to have an affair. The holiday is based on a couple of trips Richardson made to Switzerland herself in the early 1900s and it was about this time that this sort of holiday ceased to be the preserve of the very rich and became more accessible to the middles classes and the adventurous.
The holiday is something of a rest cure for Miriam. It was written in 1926 and at that time there was something of a vogue for literature in mountain resorts/ sanatoria. The Magic Mountain was published in 1924 and the climax of Women in Love (Richardson met Lawrence about this time) was set in a mountain resort. In terms of characterisation Richardson sets up, there are the typical English stereotypes who interact with continental stereotypes with Miriam in the middle. The interactions are interesting and Miriam is as perceptive as ever. There are some set piece winter sports events. The whole setting up of Oberland reminded me a little of the way Proust uses the French seaside resorts in his novels.
An interesting interlude which could stand alone as a satire on the English abroad.
September 12, 2016
The ninth of the thirteen volume series of novels that Dorothy Richardson titled ‘Pilgrimage’ – and the first novel in the last of the four Virago omnibuses – is the story of a holiday. It opens as Miriam is travelling by train to the part of Switzerland known as Oberland.
How the trip was financed, why she joined a tour group alone, wasn’t at all clear; but if nothing else I have learned to expect much in Miriam’s life to be unexplained, and I know that the best way to appreciate her story is to live with her in the moment and to be acutely aware of seemingly insignificant details that could well be important clues.
I caught her excitement as she travelled through Europe again, as she had in the first novel of this series when she travelled to Germany to take up a teaching post. The book – Pointed Roofs – seems so long ago now. Much has changed, Miriam has grown up a great deal, but she is still the same rather opinionated, rather awkward, young woman.
I’ve written before about how well Dorothy Richardson wrote and held her readers in Miriam’s consciousness; but what I don’t think I’ve written, and think now that I should, is how very well she maintained and developed her character and her consciousness through a long series of books written over many years.
The trouble is, it takes more than that to make a novel appealing to a reader.
I found much to appreciate in this book.
There was some lovely writing, and a very different setting:
“The leap of recognition, unknowing between the mountains and herself which was which, made the first sight of them — smooth snow and crinkled rock in unheard-of unimagined tawny light — seem, even at the moment of seeing, already long ago.
They knew, they smiled joyfully at the glad shock they were, sideways gigantically advancing while she passed as over a bridge across which presently there would be no return, seeing and unseeing, seeing again from the first keen vision.
They closed in upon the train, summitless, their bases gliding by, a ceaseless tawny cliff throwing its light into the carriage, almost within touch; receding, making space at its side for sudden blue water, a river accompanying, giving them gentleness who were its mighty edge; broadening, becoming a wide lake, a stretch of smooth peerless blue with mountains reduced and distant upon its hinter side… “
She was so clearly happy and relaxed exploring this new world. She viewed different goods in shop windows, and was particularly taken with Swiss biscuits. She was exhilarated by tobogganing, but she refused to ski. Understandable maybe, given that she wasn’t among her own friends, and that she was in Edwardian dress.
“Long after she had sat erect from her warm ensconcement, the sunlit mountain corridors seemed to be saying watch, see, if you can believe it, what we can do. And all the time it seemed that they must open out and leave her upon the hinter side of enchantment, and still they turned and brought fresh vistas. Sungilt masses beetling variously up into pinnacles that truly cut the sky, high up beyond their high clambering pinewoods, where their snow was broken by patches of tawny crag. She longed to glide onwards through this gladness of light.”
When there was just Miriam, when she was out in the world, this chapter of her story was a joy.
But when she was caught up with the tour group, when she was inside her small pension. it was dull.
Those scenes were well done, but there was no development, nothing new. And her interactions with the other members of the tour group felt rather pointless when I knew that they would be disappearing from her life in a matter of days.
I was homesick for the London life that illuminated the books that preceded this one.
I wondered why, when the years of the authors life were passing more quickly that those of her alter ego, when she must have realised that she was working at something that could never be finished, she chose make a two week holiday the subject of an entire novel.
Maybe she wanted to do something a little different, something a little more conventional. There were moments when I thought she could have been a very different kind of novelist; but there was also some below par writing in this book, because Miriam’s life had lost its momentum, and that made me think that the path she had chosen was the best one.
Maybe she realised that she didn’t have the time to do everything she might wish to with Miriam’s life, and the books that I have still to read will be more focused on particular aspects of Miriam’s experiences.
Or maybe she simply wanted a break from the ongoing story.
Miriam thought of Michael a number of times, but this book ended with her thought that back in London Hyppo Wilson was waiting for her to make a decision.
The next book could be very interesting.
I’m still glad that I started this series of books, I’m still eager to move forward; but I also have to say that I will be very glad when I reach the end of the final book.
How the trip was financed, why she joined a tour group alone, wasn’t at all clear; but if nothing else I have learned to expect much in Miriam’s life to be unexplained, and I know that the best way to appreciate her story is to live with her in the moment and to be acutely aware of seemingly insignificant details that could well be important clues.
I caught her excitement as she travelled through Europe again, as she had in the first novel of this series when she travelled to Germany to take up a teaching post. The book – Pointed Roofs – seems so long ago now. Much has changed, Miriam has grown up a great deal, but she is still the same rather opinionated, rather awkward, young woman.
I’ve written before about how well Dorothy Richardson wrote and held her readers in Miriam’s consciousness; but what I don’t think I’ve written, and think now that I should, is how very well she maintained and developed her character and her consciousness through a long series of books written over many years.
The trouble is, it takes more than that to make a novel appealing to a reader.
I found much to appreciate in this book.
There was some lovely writing, and a very different setting:
“The leap of recognition, unknowing between the mountains and herself which was which, made the first sight of them — smooth snow and crinkled rock in unheard-of unimagined tawny light — seem, even at the moment of seeing, already long ago.
They knew, they smiled joyfully at the glad shock they were, sideways gigantically advancing while she passed as over a bridge across which presently there would be no return, seeing and unseeing, seeing again from the first keen vision.
They closed in upon the train, summitless, their bases gliding by, a ceaseless tawny cliff throwing its light into the carriage, almost within touch; receding, making space at its side for sudden blue water, a river accompanying, giving them gentleness who were its mighty edge; broadening, becoming a wide lake, a stretch of smooth peerless blue with mountains reduced and distant upon its hinter side… “
She was so clearly happy and relaxed exploring this new world. She viewed different goods in shop windows, and was particularly taken with Swiss biscuits. She was exhilarated by tobogganing, but she refused to ski. Understandable maybe, given that she wasn’t among her own friends, and that she was in Edwardian dress.
“Long after she had sat erect from her warm ensconcement, the sunlit mountain corridors seemed to be saying watch, see, if you can believe it, what we can do. And all the time it seemed that they must open out and leave her upon the hinter side of enchantment, and still they turned and brought fresh vistas. Sungilt masses beetling variously up into pinnacles that truly cut the sky, high up beyond their high clambering pinewoods, where their snow was broken by patches of tawny crag. She longed to glide onwards through this gladness of light.”
When there was just Miriam, when she was out in the world, this chapter of her story was a joy.
But when she was caught up with the tour group, when she was inside her small pension. it was dull.
Those scenes were well done, but there was no development, nothing new. And her interactions with the other members of the tour group felt rather pointless when I knew that they would be disappearing from her life in a matter of days.
I was homesick for the London life that illuminated the books that preceded this one.
I wondered why, when the years of the authors life were passing more quickly that those of her alter ego, when she must have realised that she was working at something that could never be finished, she chose make a two week holiday the subject of an entire novel.
Maybe she wanted to do something a little different, something a little more conventional. There were moments when I thought she could have been a very different kind of novelist; but there was also some below par writing in this book, because Miriam’s life had lost its momentum, and that made me think that the path she had chosen was the best one.
Maybe she realised that she didn’t have the time to do everything she might wish to with Miriam’s life, and the books that I have still to read will be more focused on particular aspects of Miriam’s experiences.
Or maybe she simply wanted a break from the ongoing story.
Miriam thought of Michael a number of times, but this book ended with her thought that back in London Hyppo Wilson was waiting for her to make a decision.
The next book could be very interesting.
I’m still glad that I started this series of books, I’m still eager to move forward; but I also have to say that I will be very glad when I reach the end of the final book.
February 1, 2026
Both Miriam and the reader have earned some tobogganing at this point.
Contains all the themes and aspects of the previous 8 volumes, en miniature, like in a snow globe.
The night train journey is especially impressive.
Contains all the themes and aspects of the previous 8 volumes, en miniature, like in a snow globe.
The night train journey is especially impressive.
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October 24, 2020A brief winter holiday in the Swiss Alps. Miriam discovers tobogganing to add to bicycling in the list of things that she has a woman can do. Descriptions of the natural scenery, of winter sports, etc., almost make me nostalgic for childhood winters. Quite a feat. As usual, Miriam doesn’t quite know what to do about the men in her life and, as usual, there are several. This one is, perhaps, my favourite in the sequence: better contained, less rambling, more concerned with the senses and what the mind makes of the senses. As well as with manners (and pretentiousness, off cawse).
April 19, 2022
Re-read for online book group discussion.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews