Dora Marsden

Dora Marsden ( born March 5, 1882 in Marsden ( England); † December 13, 1960 in Dumfries, Scotland ) was a feminist, author of avant-garde literature and selfish anarchist.

Youth

Marsden was born in Marsden near Huddersfield, Yorkshire,. 1890 left her father after economic blunders of his textile factory the family. It began with 13 to work as a tutor or teacher. At 18, she attended the University of Manchester for three years and then worked for five years as a full-time teacher. Marsden was involved in the struggle for women's suffrage during their studies. In 1909 she was arrested because of their political activity and took a job at the Women's Social and Political Union, in order to leave in 1911 because of disputes about the guide.

Activity, as Issuer

Marsden's most important cultural work was the publication in 1911 of three publications, with the later more or less continuations of the first are:

• The Free Woman, November 1911 - October 1912
• The New Freewoman June 1913 - December 1913
• The Egoist, January 1914 - December 1919

The magazines were mostly published under the direction of author Harriet Shaw Weaver. During the time when the Maganzinen its focus is changed from feminism to individual anarchism.

The publications published to a high standard and propagated the modernist movement. Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, DH Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Herbert Read and James Joyce contributed material to the periodicals at. Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was first published as a serial in The Egoist.

The Egoist, whose title had been proposed by Ezra Pound, was not chosen as a tribute to the philosophical egoist Max Stirner. It was more of a philosophical term which was at that time in the air and was connected with authors such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Barres. As Stirner's book The Ego and Its Own was released, it was never fully criticized by Marsden. She stated to like it, but reject in parts. In particular, they did not share Stirner's attitude to God, while Stirner was of the view that God and other religious figures from the exterior, the company came, Marsden said that the idea of ​​a higher creature is an inner part of human nature.

Marsden's philosophical legacy

1920 Marsden withdrew from the literary and philosophical scene and spent fifteen years in seclusion with the development of their magnum opus, in which they wanted to bring together insights from philosophy, mathematics, physics, biology and theology. It was published by Harriet Shaw Weaver in two volumes under the titles The Definition of the Godhead (1928) and Mysteries of Christianity ( 1930).

This extensive work was not well received, even by their former supporters. Marsden 1930 suffered a nervous breakdown, the consequences of which was reinforced in 1935 by the death of her mother. Finally, she had the last 25 years of her life, spent in a home for the mentally ill in Dumfries, Scotland.