Paint it Today

This novel, a never-before published "roman a clef" by the Imagist writer, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), that explores H.D.'s love for women, is a lyrical recreation of the love and loss of her friend and first love, Frances Gregg, and of her later meeting with Bryher (Winifred Ellerman), who was to become H.D.'s lifelong companion. Spanning the years from H.D.'s childhood in Pennsylvania to the birth of her daughter, Perdita, in 1919, this turbulent love story is set against the backdrop of World War 1, H.D.'s involvement in early 20th-century London literary circles, her beief engagement to American poet Ezra Pound and her shattered marriage to British novelist Richard Aldington. "Paint it Today" is H.D.'s most "lesbian" novel, a modern, homoerotic tale of passage which focuses almost entirely on the young heroine's search for the "sister love" which would empower her spiritually, creatively, and sexually. Cassandra Laity's introduction places H.D.'s love for the sexually magnetic, betraying Gregg and for the more nurturing and loyal Bryher in the context of the lesbian Romanticism of early modern fiction.
Her annotations of all Greek references and literary quotations, as well as biographical "facts" represented in the text, provide nuance and detail to this engrossing work.