Ebook: The Astral H.D.: Occult and Religious Sources and Contexts for H.D.’s Poetry and Prose

Modernist poet H.D. had many visionary and paranormal experiences throughout her life. Although Sigmund Freud worried that they might be 'symptoms,' she rebelled, educating herself in the alternative world of the occult and spiritualism in order to transform the raw material into a mythical autobiography woven throughout her poetry, prose, and life-writing. The Astral H.D. narrates the fascinating story of how she used the occult to transform herself, and provides surprising revelations about her friendships and conflicts with famous figures-such as Sigmund Freud and the Battle of Britain War Hero Hugh Dowding-along the way.

"An excellent guide to H.D.'s occultism: her reading, her associative processing of that reading, and her appropriation and adaptation of it in her later poetry … This book is extraordinarily well-researched, meticulous, and thorough. It is a challenge to read, purely because of the breadth and scope of H.D.'s reading in the occult, but Robinson has full control of this mass of material.” –  Literature & Theology
“An important and useful addition to the scholarship on H.D.'s involvement in spiritualism and the occult.” –  Donna K. Hollenberg, Professor Emerita of English, University of Connecticut, USA
“The Astral H.D. will inspire new critical assessments of H.D.'s great war epic, Trilogy, as well as some of her lesser known poetry, such as Vale Ave and the poems of Hermetic Definition. Robinson's grasp on the occult literature H.D. was reading in her later years is impressive, and he illuminates beautifully some of the more esoteric source material of her extensive library.” –  Lara Vetter, Associate Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA
“In The Astral H.D., Robinson undertakes a fascinating investigation into the myriad complexities of H.D.'s engagement with the occult. Robinson's thorough and erudite scholarship marshals a wealth of archival research and provides deft readings of H.D.'s most challenging texts. An invaluable resource for H.D. scholars, this volume will also be essential reading for all those interested in how an accomplished writer might appropriate, adapt and deploy a complex constellation of hermetic images and ideas.” –  Elizabeth Anderson, Impact Research Fellow, University of Stirling, UK, and author of H.D. and Modernist Religious Imagination
“Positioned as a supplement to Susan Stanford Friedman's Psyche Reborn (1981), this book focuses on H.D.'s late long poems, particularly the spiritual and esoteric texts that influenced her in her last decade of writing. Tracing her marginalia in these books, Robinson asserts that occultism not only inspired her poetry but also offered her a framework to think about her life events, “allowing for an extensive project of weaving together her memories, dreams, visions, fantasies, and future.” By locating the sources of H.D.'s gnosticism, hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism, this book provides detailed readings of Trilogy (1973), Helen in Egypt (1961), and Hermetic Definition (1971).” –  American Literature