Hilda Doolittle

Gift Hilda Doolittle No Edition Stated edition

The connections and interconnections of past and present??the realization that life is a whole continuously echoing back to the past and unfolding toward the future??were sources of the strength, renewal, and joy celebrated in H. D.'s Trilogy and, in a differing, but no less real way, in The Gift??her novelistic memoir of childhood. 

In recapturing her memories of being a very little girl in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and later on a country place outside Philadelphia, H. D. "let the story tell itself or the child tell it." It is this voice or child's-eye view that lends The Gift its special charm as H. D. recreates the ordinary and extraordinary occasions of her early youth, the nightmares and delights. A road-company presentation of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Christmas Eve with its particular family ritual, a family outing, a disturbing accident??the happenings and incidents, perceptions and misconceptions with which a child's life is crowded are the substance of this most winning book. As she did for the H. D. novel HERmione, H. D.'s daughter, Perdita Schaffner, provides a fine introduction.