Doolittle, Hilda

The American poet and novelist Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She had five brothers and was her parents’ only daughter. Her artistic mother was very musical and her father was an astronomer. The family moved to the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby in 1895 when Doolittle’s father was appointed professor at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1904, Hilda Doolittle enrolled at Bryn Mawr College where she studied Greek literature. She became engaged to the poet Ezra Pound when she was still a teenager. They broke up when Pound moved to Europe in 1908, but remained friends for the rest of their lives. Doolittle travelled to Europe in 1911 and settled in London, in 1913 she married the poet Richard Aldington and she gave birth to a stillborn child in 1915. The couple separated in 1917, but were not formally divorced until 1938. Doolittle had a daughter, Perdita, with the composer Cecil Gray in 1919.