HERmione, is an autobiographical novel

Autobiographical novel

An autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...

 written by imagist poet H.D.

H.D.

H.D. was an American poet, novelist and memoirist known for her association with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets such as Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington...

. It forms part of what she refers to as her Madrigal cycle, which also includes Bid Me to Live, Paint it Today and Asphodel.

Publication

Although written in 1927, it was not published until 1981; this may be due to a lack of confidence in her own writing quality, as H.D. suggested was true of Asphodel, or due to the centrality of her homosexual relationship with Gregg represented in the novel. While there is no evidence that H.D. attempted to publish the novel, it, along with another autobiographical work The Gift were being prepared for publication at the time of her death in 1961. Her literary executor, Norman Holmes Pearson, had created a typescript of HER which had been heavily revised by H.D.

Content

In the novel, she represents herself as Hermione Gart, a woman in her twenties, shortly after failing at Bryn Mawr. It includes portraits of poet Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

(as George Lowndes) and Frances Josepha Gregg (as Fayne Rabb), with both of whom she had relationships.