Hilda Doolittle.

Hilda Doolittle entered the world on September 10, 1886 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her father, Charles Leander Doolittle, was a professor of astronomy at Lehigh University; her mother was Helen Eugenia Wolle. When Hilda was nine, her father became director of the Flower Astronomical Observatory at the University of Pennsylvania, and the family moved to Philadelphia. She attended Friends’ Central School and later Bryn Mawr College, but had to leave in her second year due to ill health.

In 1911, Hilda Doolittle traveled to Europe and came under the influence of Ezra Pound and his Imagist movement. Pound submitted her poems to Harriet Monroe’s Poetry magazine, and they were published in 1913. That same year she married poet and critic Richard Aldington, who edited the Egoist. During World War I, she took over as editor of the magazine when Aldington joined the British army. After the war, the couple divorced. In 1930, she appeared as Astrid in the experimental film Borderline, directed by Kenneth MacPherson.

Hilda Doolittle married poet Richard Aldington in 1913. They had one daughter, Perdita Aldington. The couple divorced after World War I, as Aldington’s return from military service led to estrangement. Hilda never remarried. She traveled to the United States in 1920, visiting California, before settling in Lake Geneva, Switzerland. She died of a stroke on September 27, 1961 at age 75.

As H.D., Hilda Doolittle published her first Imagist poems in 1913. Her poems exemplified the movement’s precision and clarity. The 1930 film Borderline, where she played Astrid, became an experimental cinema landmark. Her work remains part of modern American literature.