12 Facts About Beatrice Hastings

Beatrice Hastings was the pen name of Emily Alice Haigh, an English writer, literary critic, poet and theosophist.

Orage, prior to the outbreak of World War I Hastings was friend and lover of Katherine Mansfield, whose work was first published in The New Age.

Beatrice Hastings had love affairs with Wyndham Lewis and Amedeo Modigliani.

Beatrice Hastings was born in London but grew up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

Beatrice Hastings described herself in one instance as 'a minor poet of the first class.

Beatrice Hastings was outspoken in her feminist views and The New Age correspondence section provided the space in which she developed many of the ideas which would inform her 1909 feminist tract, Woman's Worst Enemy: Woman.

In 1914 Beatrice Hastings moved to Paris and became a figure in bohemian circles due to her friendship with Max Jacob.

Beatrice Hastings shared an apartment in Montparnasse with Amedeo Modigliani and became a model for 14 of his paintings, including his 1916 Seated Nude.

Beatrice Hastings grew up in Hackney, spent time in South Africa, and published several novels about bohemian life in Paris.

Towards the end of her life Beatrice Hastings felt excluded from the literary recognition she felt her due, and blamed Orage, whom she accused of conspiring to keep her out of literary circles in Britain.

Beatrice Hastings published a pamphlet, The Old New Age, in which she bitterly criticised Orage, calling him 'a rustic, a lout, a snob'.

Beatrice Hastings attempted to defend Helena Blavatsky from charges of fraud and plagiarism.