This book has been many years in the writing, and I have many debts of gratitude. Firstly, to Philippa Brewster, pearl among editors, for her patience, insight, blue pencil and constant support; to my colleagues at Goldsmiths, University of London, especially Chris Baldick, Maura Dooley, Bill McCormick, Blake Morrison and Maria Macdonald in my own department, and the late and much missed Ben Pimlott, with whom I had many conversations about the art of biography; to my students, for their constant stimulation and fresh thinking: to Laura Marcus, Andrew Thacker and Michael Doolan, who read parts of the book as it was in progress; to the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust and Goldsmiths for grants that supported this project, and to Isobel Armstrong, Gillian Beer and Rachel Bowlby for supporting my applications for these, and for much intellectual enrichment besides; to the members of the London Modernist Seminar and the Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group; to many other fellow scholars with whom I have talked over aspects of this work, including Rebecca Beasley, Vicky Bertram, Peter Brooker, Ron Bush, Rod Edmond, Lucy McDiarmid, Peter Nicholls, Suzanne Raitt, Nigel Rigby, Nick Selby; many thanks also to Sarah Barnsley, Sarah Martin and Emily Carr for brilliant assistance in the final delivery of the manuscript; and to my immensely supportive editorial team at Jonathan Cape: Dan Franklin, Alex Bowler and Sarah Thomas; as well as my agent, Bill Hamilton. I also owe particular thanks to Christopher Middleton, who talked to me in Austin about F.S. Flint, to Ethel Simpson in Fayetteville, for discussions about John Gould Fletcher, and to Dr Garret FitzGerald, his daughter Mary and niece Jennifer, for information, warm hospitality and generous assistance when I visited Dublin to learn more about Desmond FitzGerald. My warm thanks also to the research libraries I have used, for all their assistance, and for permission to quote from unpublished manuscripts: the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin; Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries, Fayetteville; the Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale; the UCD Archives, James Joyce Library, University College Dublin; and most of all the British Library, where I have spent so many happily engrossed hours over the years. My thanks as well to the staff of the London Library, Senate House Library, Cambridge University Library and not least Goldsmiths Library, especially Ann Alridge for her help with interlibrary loans. And very special thanks to all my long-suffering family, particularly to Ben and Emily for all their support and encouragement, and most of all to Tony, always my first reader and critic.
Grateful acknowledgement to Linda Flint for permission to quote from the works of F.S. Flint, to Polly Bird, copyright holder and literary executor, for permission to quote from the works of Douglas Goldring, and to Garret FitzGerald for permission to quote from Desmond FitzGerald’s unpublished papers and his own. Many thanks to Catherine Aldington for her good wishes for the book; extracts from Richard Aldington’s published and unpublished work (held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; the Houghton Library, Harvard University; and the Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale), all © copyright the Estate of Richard Aldington, reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of Richard Aldington c/o Rosica Colin Limited, London. Extracts from The Letters of D.H. Lawrence, Vols. 1–3, reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli and Pollinger Ltd. Extracts from Ford Madox Ford: A Dual Life, Vol. 1 (1996) by Max Saunders, and The Complete Works of T.E. Hulme (1994) edited by Karen Csengeri, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press. Extracts from the work of W.B. Yeats by permission of A.P. Watt on behalf of Gráinne Yeats.
Grateful acknowledgment to Faber & Faber Ltd for permission to reproduce various extracts from Humphrey Carpenter, A Serious Character: the Life of Ezra Pound; ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, ‘Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a cigar’ in T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems: 1909–1935; Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot, ed. Frank Kermode; Selected Essays of T.S. Eliot, Faber & Faber, quoted in Robert Crawford, The Savage and the City in the Work of T.S. Eliot, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Grateful acknowledgment to Faber & Faber Ltd and to New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to reproduce various extracts from Ezra Pound and Dorothy Shakespear: Their Letters:1909–1914, copyright ©1984 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Trust; Letters of Ezra Pound, 1907–1941, copyright © 1950 by Ezra Pound; ‘Histerion’, ‘Alba Beningalis’, ‘Piccadilly’, ‘The White Stag’, ‘Planh’, ‘Blandula, Tenulla, Vagula’, ‘Und Drang’, ‘To Hulme (T.E.) and FitzGerald (a Certain)’, ‘Redondillas’, and ‘Shallot’ in Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound, copyright © 1976 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Cantos 1, 77, 80, 81, 87, 115 in Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright ©1975 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, copyright © 1954 by Ezra Pound; Selected Prose: 1909–1965, copyright © 1973 by Ezra Pound; Polite Essays, copyright ©1937 by Ezra Pound; The Translations of Ezra Pound, copyright © 1953 by Ezra Pound; Pound/Ford: The Story of a Literary Friendship, copyright © 1971, 1972, 1973, 1982 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Pound/Joyce: The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, copyright © 1967 by Ezra Pound; Pound/Lewis: The Letters of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, copyright © 1985 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Pound/The Little Review: The Letters of Ezra Pound to Margaret Anderson, copyright © 1988 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, copyright © 1996 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; A Lume Spento and Other Poems, copyright © 1965 by Ezra Pound; ‘The Tree’, ‘Cino’, ‘Praise of Ysoult’, ‘In Durance’, ‘Sestina: Altaforte’, ‘Ballad of the Goodly Fere’, ‘Portrait d’une Femme’, ‘The Seafarer’, ‘Δ
ρια’, ‘The Return’, ‘The Garden’, ‘Salutation the Second’, ‘The Bath Tub’, ‘Fan-Piece for her Imperial Lord’, ‘Ts’ai Chi’h’, ‘Coitus’, ‘The Tea Shop’, ‘Provincia Deserta’, ‘Lament of the Frontier Guards’, ‘Exile’s Letter’, ‘Mœurs Contemporaines’, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, ‘Three Cantos, 1917’, ‘Salutation the Third’ in Personae: the Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound (rev. edn., ed. Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz) copyright © 1926, 1935, 1971 by Ezra Pound.
Grateful acknowledgment to New Directions for permission to reproduce various extracts from A Walking Tour in Southern France: Ezra Pound among the Troubadours, copyright © 1992 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; The Spirit of Romance, copyright © 1968 by Ezra Pound; The Spirit of Romance: An Attempt to Define Somewhat the Charm of the Pre-Renaissance Literature of Latin Europe, copyright © 1910 by Ezra Pound; ‘La Donzella Beata’, ‘Domina’, in H.D., End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound, copyright © 1979 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn, 1915–1924, copyright © 1991 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Ezra Pound and Margaret Cravens: A Tragic Friendship, copyright © 1988 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; The Letters of Ezra Pound to Alice Corbin Henderson, copyright © 1993 by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust; Indiscretions, or, Une revue de deux mondes, copyright © 1923 by Ezra Pound; Patria Mia, copyright © 1950 by Ralph Fletcher Seymour; ‘Translator’s Postscript’, The Natural Philosophy of Love by Rémy de Gourmont, copyright © 1926 by Ezra Pound; Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir, copyright © 1916, 1970 by Ezra Pound: also Ezra Pound’s work in various periodicals; Paideuma; New Freewoman; Egoist; Poetry Review; Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, including lines from ‘To Whistler, American’, ‘In the Station of the Metro’; New Age; Blast 1 & 2, including lines from ‘Salutation the Third’ and ‘Et Faim Saillir le Loup des Boys’; Little Review; Fortnightly Review; American Literature; and periodicals reproduced in Ezra Pound’s Poetry and Prose: Contributions to Periodicals, Vols. 1, 2 & 7 prefaced and arranged by Lea Baechler, A. Walton Litz and James Longenbach, New York: Garland Publishing, 1991; and extracts from Ezra Pound’s unpublished correspondence held at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin, and the British Library. All copyright © by the Trustees of the Ezra Pound Literary Property Trust.
Grateful acknowledgment to New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to reproduce various extracts from the writing of H.D.: in Susan Stanford Friedman (ed.), Analyzing Freud: Letters of H.D., Bryher and their Circle, copyright © 2002 by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle; End to Torment: A Memoir of Ezra Pound, copyright © 1979 by New Directions Publishing Corporation; ‘Sea Rose’, ‘The Shrine’, ‘The Gift’, ‘Sheltered Garden’, ‘Garden’, ‘Storm’, ‘Sea Iris’, ‘Hermes of the Ways’, ‘Cities’, ‘The Tribute’, ‘Toward the Piraeus’, ‘Amaranth’, ‘Envy’, in Collected Poems, 1912–44, copyright © 1925 by Hilda Doolittle, copyright © 1982 by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle; Winter Love in Hermetic Definition, copyright © 1958, 1959, 1961, 1972 by Norman Holmes Pearson; Kora and Ka, with Mira-Mare, copyright © 1996 by Perdita Schaffner; Her, copyright © 1981 by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle; Asphodel, copyright © 1992 by Perdita Schaffner; Bid Me to Live: A Madrigal, copyright © 1960 by Norman Holmes Pearson; Paint it Today, copyright © 1992 by Perdita Schaffner; Tribute to Freud, copyright © 1956, 1974 by Norman Holmes Pearson; The Gift: the Complete Text, copyright © 1969, 1982 by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle, copyright © 1998 by Perdita Schaffner; The Cantos of Ezra Pound, ed. Ernest Heminway et al., copyright by Hilda Doolittle, 1933; also from H.D.’s work in periodicals, in the Egoist, including extracts from ‘Mid-day’, ‘Choruses from Iphigenia in Aulis’ and ‘Oread’, and in Contemporary Literature and Agenda; and previously unpublished extracts from H.D.’s unpublished work and correspondence held at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin and the Houghton Library, Harvard University. All copyright © by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle.
Grateful acknowledgment to New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to reproduce various extracts from the writing of William Carlos Williams: ‘A Sort of Song’, Selected Poems, copyright © 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1962 by William Carlos Williams; ‘Prologue (1918)’, Kora in Hell, in Imaginations, copyright © 1960, 1970 by Florence H. Williams; ‘A Street Market, N.Y., 1908’, Poems, copyright © 1909 by William Carlos Williams; ‘Postlude’ and ‘Contemporania’, The Tempers, copyright © 1913 by William Carlos Williams; Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams, copyright © 1957 by William Carlos Williams; The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams, copyright © 1951 by William Carlos Williams; I wanted to write a poem: the autobiography of the works of a poet, copyright © 1958 by William Carlos Williams; and in Zhaoming Qian, Orientalism and Modernism: the Legacy of China in Pound and Williams, copyright © 1995 by William Eric Williams and Paul H. Williams.
While every effort has been made to obtain permission from holders of copyright material produced herein, the publishers would like to apologise for any omissions and will be pleased to incorporate missing acknowledgements in any further editions.