“The Priestess, the Medium, the Prophetess”: Identity in British Modernist Literary Patronage

Placing modernist literary production into the larger context of avant-garde personal networks greatly erodes the myth of the modernist creative genius. It allows for an understanding of the complex mechanisms at play even in small-scale productions, each capable of influencing the final literary work. Easy to see from hindsight, especially with the help of Pierre Bourdieu and Howard Becker, it was also felt acutely by the modernist writers themselves. For fear of their work being viewed as unoriginal or, even more radically, collaborative, writers such as Lytton Strachey and D. H. Lawrence took pains to distance themselves from their patrons who often facilitated the production of their works by means of financial or non-material support. In order to navigate the labyrinthian relationships of patronage, both they and their patrons, chiefly Ottoline Morrell, assumed various identities and employed the narrative strategies explored in this paper.