(married name Odle)

Novelist and journalist.

17 May 1873 – 17 June 1957

Education

Attended school in Abingdon and Worthington, Sussex.

Educated by a governess in London before becoming a student at Southborough House 1885-1890.

Some Key Achievements and Interests

Started earning her own living at 17, leaving home when her family went bankrupt.

1896 Started working as an assistant at a Harley Street dentist during the day writing short stories, reviews and poems in her spare time, these published in periodicals.

Attended meetings of the Fabian Society, contacted Anarchists, met suffragettes, Quakers and Zionists but did not commit to any group or ideology.

Published 12 novels between 1915 and 1938. Her writing style has been compared to James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

Issues

Expectations of a middle-class woman at this time that she live with her family until marriage.  She broke free but struggled to establish an independent life, earning little, living in basic accommodation, being alone, all of which she charted in her work.

Her father’s bankruptcy when she was 17 shook the family. Poverty remained an issue for her through her life.

Her mother suffered from depression with Richardson caring for her until her mother’s suicide in 1895.

Found a teaching career to be restrictive.

Had a love affair with H.G. Wells, became pregnant, and miscarried, then, in 1907, suffered a breakdown.

Looked after her husband when he suffered from consumption and until his death.

Novels did not sell well and she had to rely on her journalism and reviews for an income.

Connection to Bloomsbury

1896 – 1906 Lived in Bloomsbury – her life at the time informing her writing – see The Tunnel.

Miriam, the protagonist of Pilgrimage whose life, charted through the series, mirrors much of Richardson’s own, takes a room in Bloomsbury when she arrives in London:

She closed the door and stood just inside it looking at the room. It was smaller than her memory of it. When she had stood in the middle of the floor with Mrs Bailey, she had looked at nothing but Mrs Bailey, waiting for the moment to ask about the rent. Coming upstairs she had felt the room was hers and barely glanced at it when Mrs Bailey opened the door. From the moment of waiting on the stone steps outside the front door, everything had opened to the movement of her impulse. She was surprised now at her familiarity with the details of the room… that idea of visiting places in dreams. It was something more than that… All the real part of your life has a real dream in it; some of the real dream part of you coming true.

………..

Strolling home towards midnight along the narrow pavement of Endsleigh Gardens, Miriam felt as fresh and untroubled as if it were early morning.  When she got out of her Hammersmith omnibus into the Tottenham Court Road, she had found that the street had lost its first terrifying impression and had become part of her home. The Tunnell

Used the resources of, and networked in, the British Museum Reading Room (ticket issued 1896).

Female networks include

British Museum Reading Room women who networked.

E B C Jones, May Sinclair, Naomi Royde-Smith.

Writing/Publications include

Published articles, reviews, short stories, poems and translations.

1912 an article The Disabilities of Women in The Freewoman.

1914 The Quakers Past and Present

1914 Gleanings from the Works of George Fox

1938 series of 13 vols Pilgrimage comprising Pointed Roofs (1915), Backwater (1916), Honeycomb (1917), The Tunnel (1919), Interim (1919), Deadlock (1921), Revolving Lights (1923), The Trap (1925), Oberland(1927), Dawn’s Left Hand (1931), Clear Horizon ( 1935), Dimple Hill (1938), and, appeared posthumously, March Moonlight (1967).

Legacy

Blue plaque Woburn Walk, Bloomsbury marking where she lived 1905-1906.

Further reading

Stark, Susanne. “Richardson [married name Odle], Dorothy Miller (1873–1957), novelist and journalist.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.  23. Oxford University Press. Date of access 20 Apr. 2023, https://www-oxforddnb-com.proxy.library.nd.edu/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37894