Majic Ring

"The introduction offers what will prove to be one of the most nuanced understandings of H.D.'s engagement with the occult and spiritualism to date, and the carefully researched notes will aid scholars and readers tremendously as they make their way through the novel's complexities."--Lara Vetter, University of North Carolina, Charlotte "An indispensable prose companion to H.D.'s poetic masterpiece, Trilogy, as well as the later, darker The Sword Went Out to Sea. Tryphonopoulos provides a nuanced, scholarly context for readers to appreciate the significance of H.D.'s dazzling late-life oeuvre."--Cynthia Hogue, Arizona State University Set during the World War II air raids in London, H.D.'s fascinating and visionary novel, Majic Ring, documents her spiritualist activities during this time. Never before published, the work offers a hybrid pastiche of autobiographical, fictional, and epistolary modes of writing. This annotated edition of Majic Ring presents important information about H.D.'s personal history, her heterodox interests, and her notions about the creative process itself. It also includes much on the source material for Trilogy, her well-known three-part poem on the experience of the blitz. In fact, the publication of this novel will change radically the way we read Trilogy, and will alter profoundly the way we view modernism, the creative process, and women's literary production during mid-century. H.D. (born Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) was an American writer who exerted enormous influence on modernist poetry and prose. Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos is, university research professor of English and associate dean of the school of graduate studies at the University of New Brunswick.