In a letter to Rebecca West, H.G. Wells wrote from on board the SS Adriatic in 1921: ‘If I have much more of this bloody steamship, I shall begin to write like Dorothy Richardson’. Despite its tonguein- cheek tone, Wells's comment calls attention to the particularity of Richardson's style as well as her reception, even amongst fellow authors, as a difficult and often frustrating writer.

The description of a tea party attended by Richardson's protagonist Miriam Henderson in Honeycomb, the third volume of Pilgrimage, published in 1917, exemplifies some of the reasons for this reception:

The scene, like the whole of Pilgrimage, is conveyed solely through Miriam's point of view, interspersing her impressions of her surroundings, in this case her hostess's sun-lit room, with a rendition of her thoughts. Much of the content of this passage is communicated through punctuation, literary techniques and an awareness of how language works: the ellipses indicating pauses in which Miriam dwells on the quality of the name Wilde; the italics conveying, in combination with the dashes, the speaker's intonation but also the way in which the name is savoured in Miriam's mind. The shift from reported speech to free indirect discourse conveys the way in which the name Wilde sparks Miriam's imagination, combining the pleasure she is taking in the arrival of spring at the beginning of the passage with the thought of attending the theatre. Language then becomes part of her momentary delight as she uses the homonym ‘wild’ to qualify her sensation of spring so that the concept itself, and its perfect depiction of her present sensations, becomes the thing of genius.