Born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Hilda Doolittle was educated at Bryn Mawr College. In 1911, after a visit abroad, she helped to organize the imagists with Ezra Pound. She married Richard Aldington, the English poet and novelist, whom she later divorced. Written in poetic prose, her poignant and subtle Tribute to Freud: With Unpublished Letters by Freud to the Author (1965) is a record of her memories of her analytical experiences in 1933--34, a memoir of Freud (see Vols. 3 and 5) in London in 1938--39, and a description of the impact of his unique personality. In Palimpsest (1926), she explores the difficulties that a woman finds herself in as she tries to cultivate both love and art in a world that is ugly, vulgar, and violent. Her novel Bid Me To Live: A Madrigal (1960), about a womans loneliness and self-discovery during World War I, is a poetic stream-of-consciousness study. She lived in London from 1911 through the bombings of two world wars and spent her later years in Zurich, Switzerland, coming to New York only for brief visits. She received the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award (1959) and the award of merit medal for poetry (1960) from the American Academy of Arts and Letters---the first time the latter was awarded to a woman.
