The Pilgrimage of Dorothy Richardson by Joanne Winning

Dorothy Richardson's thirteen-volume opus of autobiographical fiction, Pilgrimage, follows the entire are of an independent woman's life and is considered a classic of modernist literature. Joanne Winning argues here, however, that the novels have remained misunderstood, and she demonstrates that Pilgrimage contains a carefully constructed, though concealed, subtext of lesbian desire and sexuality. This analysis, she suggests, is the first step toward recognizing and defining a literary movement of 'lesbian modernism', as well as toward a deeper understanding of how lesbian modernist writers helped shape modernist literature as a whole.