Bryher (1894-1983) was the pen name of Annie Winnifred Ellerman. She was born in September 1894 in Margate. She travelled in Europe as a child, to France, Italy and Egypt. At the age of fourteen she was enrolled in a traditional English boarding school. On one of her travels, Ellerman journeyed to the Scilly Isles off the southwestern coast of Great Britain and acquired her future pseudonym from one of them.

During the 1920s, Bryher was an unconventional figure in Paris, being acquainted or indeed intimate with Ernest Hemingway. James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Beach and Berenice Abbott.

Prior to and during World War II, Bryher and Alice B. Toklas were instrumental in helping hundreds of mainly Jewish refugees ecape from the Nazis.

Although Bryher had entered into a marriage of convenience with the American author Robert McAlmon in 1921, her real partner was the poet Hilda Doolittle (H.D.).

Her works include:

• Gate to the Sea (1958)
• The Player's Boy (1953)
• Roman Wall (1954)
• Ruan (1960)
• Visa for Avalon (1965)

External links

• The article Superior Guinea Pig: Bryher and Psychoanalysis by Maggie Magee, M.S.W. and Diana C. Miller, M.D. at http://laisps.org/GuineaP.html

Books

• Analyzing Freud: The Letters of H.D., Bryher, and Their Circle by Bryher, H.D., Susan Stanford Friedman (Editor) ISBN 0811214990