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Dorothy Shakespear Pound



[ 1886 - 1973 ]




A Selection of Images, Digital Facsimiles & Online Resources



We are fortunate that we're able to post a digital facsimile of Elimus: A Story With Twelve Designs by D. Shakespear (1923).  There is renewed interest in Dorothy Shakespear and her association with Vorticism, so the digital facsimile is timely in that it showcases her twelve Vorticist designs.  An artist in her own right, we also have selections from a book of her own work Etruscan Gate.  This work was published by The Rougement Press in 1971 and contains journal entries from 1909 - 1911 with additional artwork.   Shakespear did many drawings for her husband Ezra Pound's work, so we've assembled a few of her cover drawings below, along with two links to further pages on her Initial drawings for Pound's XXX Cantos.   Dorothy Shakespear didn't exhibit as formally throughout her life as did some of the other Vorticist artists, but she was earnest about her work and skillful in her craft.

We also dedicate this page to our long-gone friend Bill Howley, Sr.  Bill was a bookstore colleague of ours many years ago.  An old Trotskyite, he often entertained us with colorful stories about traveling the US on trains during the Depression, and about being trapped in London during the German Blitz.  He later joined the Post Office in Washington DC and realized that the Dorothy Pound on his delivery route was the wife of Ezra Pound, who at that time was incarcerated in Saint Elizabeth's. Bill loved literature and struck up a friendship with Dorothy.  She would often invite him in for tea and discussion.  Bill was the archetype of the open-minded, big-hearted radical.





Elimus: A Story With Twelve Designs by D. Shakespear

Author: WINDELER, B. C.; Woodcut Frontispiece by Robert Dill; Three Mountains Press, Paris, 1923 ;
  [ Dorothy Shakespear Pound ][ Vorticism ] 47 pages ; roughly 6 7/8 inches wide x 10 5/8 inches high.


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CLICK THROUGH FOR SELECTIONS FROM ETRUSCAN GATE


Dorothy Shakespear Pound

selections from

Etruscan Gate

A Notebook with Drawings and Watercolours


The Rougement Press, Exeter, 1971. First edition. Edited by Moelwyn Merchant. 43 pages.
Based on Dorothy Pound's journal entries from 1909 - 1911, with additional artwork. 



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The Etruscan Gate page includes samples of her watercolors.


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Visiting the Pounds in 1971 (PDF, 8.9MB)

http://www.oliviatemple.com/articles/words_1985.pdf



From the December 1985 issue of Words - The New Literary Forum.



Image via wikipedia Ripostes:
Dorothy Shakespear designed the
Vorticism-inspired cover art
for Pound's 1915 Ripostes



A free full digital facsimile of Ripostes
is available online at archive.org




Catholic Anthology 1914-1915
Pound, Ezra (editor)
London: Elkin Mathews, 1915
116 p.; 18 x 12 cm.

FULL TEXT ONLINE at The Modernist Journals Project






Advertisement

in Blast for
Ezra Pound's
forthcoming book
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Sample cover image left from James Cummins, Bookseller




Left:
p.174 of Olga Nikolova's article on the design and typography of the deluxe editions of the Cantos, including Dorothy Shakespear's initials.


Ezra Pound’s Cantos
 De Luxe Preamble

Nikolova, Olga.
article pdf online here
Modernism/modernity,
Volume 15, Number 1, January 2008,
 pp.
155-177 (Article)
 The Johns Hopkins U. Press
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Shakespear's Pound:
Illuminated Cantos

Printed by LaNana Creek Press
http://lananacreekpress.com/shakespear.html