Table Of ContentMaterial Spirituality in Modernist
Women’s Writing
ii
Material Spirituality in Modernist
Women’s Writing
Elizabeth Anderson
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To Owen and Lucy
who know far more about the liveliness of things than I ever will
vi
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Threads and silver paper: Spirituality of gift and process in H.D.’s
war writing 19
2 ‘The pebbles were each one alive’: Animism and Anglo-Catholicism
in Mary Butts’s writing 47
3 Darkness and dirt: Virginia Woolf’s material mysticism 67
4 Radiant dandelions: Gwendolyn Brooks’s domestic sublime 89
5 Things in the city 115
Notes 137
Bibliography 181
Index 203
Acknowledgements
The early seeds of this project were sown at a seminar on objects at the Modernist
Studies Association conference in Montreal in 2009. My thanks to Gabrielle
Moyer for facilitating a thoughtful and generous discussion. Encouragement to
consider spirituality and things in greater depth came from Heather Walton, to
whom I owe a great debt of gratitude for her support as mentor, colleague and
friend.
Academic work is often a solitary endeavour, but a community of friends
and colleagues gathers around this work; without them, it would not have been
possible. Thanks to colleagues at the Universities of Stirling and Aberdeen for
fostering academic environments of good spirit. I have been so fortunate to call
these places home. Particular thanks are due to Adrian Hunter and Alison Jasper
for supporting me during my fellowship at Stirling. Friends and colleagues near
and far have talked through difficulties, read portions of the manuscript, given
me tips and texts (and distraction!) when needed: thanks to Tim Baker, Tara
Beaney, Kirstie Blair, Anna Fisk, Suzanne Hobson, Jenny Hyest, Bryony Randall,
Sarah Parker, Jennifer Reek, Alana Vincent, Heather Walton and Mimi Winick.
The H.D. Society holds a special place in my heart for its unstinting support
and collegial warmth. Special thanks to Annette Debo, Celena Kusch, Lara
Vetter and Rebecca Walsh for encouraging me at numerous and diverse times
and places. Helen Sword’s landmark study of academic writing practices, Air
& Light & Time & Space, reached me at a crucial stage of drafting this volume
and provided just the practical support I needed. Thanks to Abby, Lauren and
Shontael for being the best virtual writing group ever, for keeping me company
and keeping me going. I am deeply grateful to the Bloomsbury readers whose
generous and incisive comments on both the proposal and the manuscript were
extremely helpful. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own. I am grateful to
David Avital, Lucy Brown and Clara Herberg at Bloomsbury, for believing that
sometimes the quirky books are the most interesting and who have brought this
book to the light of day.
Much of the material in this book has benefited from the thoughtful
engagement of colleagues at a number of conferences and research seminars.
I would like to thank the organizers of the Modernist Studies Association
Acknowledgements ix
conferences in 2013, 2016 and 2017, the International Society for Literature
Religion and Culture’s conference in 2016, and the 26th Annual International
Conference on Virginia Woolf, for providing a platform for such exchanges.
Thanks also to Judith Wolfe, Anna Fisk, Heather Walton and Suzanne Hobson
for inviting me to present papers at the University of St Andrew’s, the University
of Glasgow and the London Modernism Seminar. This book has also benefited
from discussions at a number of MSA seminars, and my thanks to Greg
Erickson, Suzanne Hobson, Jenny Hyest, Roger Rothman and Mimi Winick,
as organizers, as well as the participating colleagues, for scholarly conversations
that were equally challenging and generous.
In 2015 I had the wonderful opportunity to work with artist Charmian Pollok
to mount an exhibition at the Pathfoot Gallery, University of Stirling, inspired
by the work of Mary Butts and called ‘The Pebbles Were Each One Alive’. I am
so grateful to Charmian, Sarah Bromage and Jane Cameron for all their work to
make this possible.
I would like to thank the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland,
whose support enabled me to consult the papers of H.D. and Mary Butts at the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, Gwendolyn
Brooks’ Papers at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley
and the William Morris Gallery and its archive in Walthamstow, and the Arts
and Humanities Research Council for supporting an earlier visit to the Beinecke
Library. Thanks to the library staff, whose unfailing professionalism and support
is a gift to scholars. I wish to thank the University of Stirling, whose Impact
Fellowship supported this project for several years.
Portions of Chapters One, Two and Three appeared in earlier forms in the
following publications: Elizabeth Anderson, Andrew Radford and Heather
Walton, eds. Modernist Women Writers and Spirituality: A Piercing Darkness
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 135–51; Jane de Gay et al., eds. Virginia Woolf
and Heritage: Selected Papers from the 26th Annual Conference on Virginia
Woolf (Clemson University Press, 2017), 102–8; ‘H.D.’s Tapestry: Embroidery,
William Morris and The Sword Went Out to Sea’. Modernist Cultures 12, no. 2
(2017): 226–48; ‘The Consolation of Things: Domestic Objects in H.D.’s Writing
from the Second World War’. LIR Journal 4 (2015): 167–82. I am grateful to the
editors and publishers for permission to reuse this work.
I am also grateful to the following publishers for permission to reprint the
quotations found herein: Excerpts from TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia
Woolf. Copyright ©1927 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
renewed 1954 by Leonard Woolf. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin
