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Dora Marsden and the “WORLD-INCLUSIVE I”: Egoism, Mysticism and Radical Feminism

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Modernist Women Writers and Spirituality

Abstract

This chapter examines the commingling of mysticism and radical feminism in Dora Marsden’s egoism as it appeared in the pages of The Egoist. It argues that her disillusion with groups such as the Theosophical Society and Women’s Social and Political Union led Marsden to look for a philosophy that encouraged individual rights on the one hand and a universally attuned consciousness on the other. After a life-changing encounter with Max Stirner’s The Ego and Its Own in 1912, she set to work outlining an epistemology that would do just that. The result was the “World-Inclusive I”—a model for consciousness whose universalism superseded all societal and cultural boundaries, and had a measurable impact on the work of her literary editors Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.

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Quincey-Jones, S. (2016). Dora Marsden and the “WORLD-INCLUSIVE I”: Egoism, Mysticism and Radical Feminism. In: Anderson, E., Radford, A., Walton, H. (eds) Modernist Women Writers and Spirituality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53036-3_11

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