Dorothy Shakespear

Dorothy Shakespear (14 September 1886 – 8 December 1973) was an English artist. She was the daughter of novelist Olivia Shakespear and the wife of American poet Ezra Pound. One of a small number of women vorticist painters, she had art work published in the short-lived but influential literary magazine BLAST.

Dorothy and Pound first met in 1909 in London, and after a long courtship the two married in 1914. They lived in Paris from 1920 until 1924, and in 1925 settled in Rapallo, Italy. In spite of her husband's 50-year affair with Olga Rudge, whom he met in Paris in the early 1920s, Dorothy stayed married to Pound. In 1926 she gave birth to a son Omar Pound, who was raised in England by her mother. By the 1930s she received a number of family bequests, making her financially independent, but lost much of her money by following Pound's advice to invest in Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime.

Toward the end of World War II, Dorothy and Pound were evacuated from their home in Rapallo, and for a period she lived with Pound in Rudge's home. After the war, when Pound had been arrested for treason and incarcerated on grounds of insanity in Washington, D.C., she moved there, visiting daily, taking control of his estate, and staying with him until his release. They returned to Italy in 1958; in 1961 she moved to London, leaving her husband to live out the last decade of his life with Olga Rudge.

Dorothy's parents both came from British Indian Army families. Her mother Olivia Shakespear, born on the Isle of Wight, lived her early years in Sussex and later in London where she and her sister Florence were raised to live a life of leisure. In 1885 she married Henry Hope Shakespear (1849–1923), who traced his family line to 17th-century East London rope makers and, like his wife, came from a military family. Educated at Harrow, he went on to study law, become a barrister and in 1875 joined a law practice. The couple's only child Dorothy was born nine months after the two were married. Dorothy's mother, a minor novelist, was active in London literary circles for much of her life.

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