"Highly readable.
. . . Offers rare insights into gay life in the first quarter of
the twentieth century."-Diana Collecott, University of
Durham, author of H.D. and Sapphic Modernism
Bryher (born Annie Winifred Ellerman) is perhaps
best known today as the lifelong partner of the poet H.D. She was,
however, a central figure in modernist and avant-garde cultural
experimentation in the early twentieth century; a prolific
producer of poetry, novels, autobiography, and criticism; and an
intimate and patron of such modernist artists as Gertrude Stein,
Marianne Moore, and Dorothy Richardson. Bryher's own path-breaking
writing has remained largely neglected, long out of print, and
inaccessible to those interested in her oeuvre. Now, for the first
time since their original publication in the early 1920s, two of
Bryher's pioneering works of fictionalized autobiography, titled
Development and Two Selves, are reprinted in one volume for a new
audience of readers, scholars, and critics.
Blending poetry, prose, and autobiographical
details, Development and Two Selves together constitute a
compelling bildungsroman that is among the first ever to follow a
young woman's process of coming out. Through the fictionalized
character Nancy, the novels trace Bryher's life through her
childhood and young adulthood, giving the reader an account of the
development of a unique lesbian, feminist, and modernist
consciousness. Development and Two Selves recover significant work
by one of the first experimenters of the modernist movement and
are a welcome reintroduction of the enigmatic Bryher.
"Bryher's novels have a strong place in the
history of lesbian and transgendered writing. This volume is sure
to be a useful tool for modernist studies, women's studies, and
queer, gay, and lesbian studies."-Susan Stanford Friedman,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, author of Mappings: Feminism and
the Cultural Geographies of Encounter.
Bryher:
Two Novels: Development and Two Selves (Living Out: Gay and
Lesbian Autobiographies) 
