Amy Levy

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Standard Name: Levy, Amy
Birth Name: Amy Levy
Pseudonym: Melissa
Pseudonym: A Maiden Aunt
AL was a precocious writer who died (in 1889) so young that all her work might in other circumstances be classed as juvenilia. She is a remarkable poet, melancholy but forceful and individual. Some of her short stories and essays, and one of her three novels, fall into her own categorization of pot-boilers; in others her artistic purpose is paramount. She was also a translator of German poetry. She is a writer of the urban and the modern, whose work is given extra interest by its sometimes painful engagement with her Jewish identity and with the position of Jews in the world of the English intelligentsia.
Black and white photograph of Amy Levy, shown from the shoulders up. She is wearing a dark dress with a light lacy collar, and her dark hair is pulled back.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Vernon Lee
As early as 24 August 1887VL was calling Kit her new love, or new life (adapting the title of a poem which had been written for Lee by Amy Levy ).
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
148
The two...
Education Emma Frances Brooke
Newnham College opened in September 1871 with Anne Jemima Clough as its principal, and with five pioneering students: Mary Paley (later Marshall , who encouraged Jane Ellen Harrison to follow her to Newnham), Edith Creak
Education Elaine Feinstein
She later felt she was lucky to be a postwar student; before then, she would have been as out of place at Newnham as Amy Levy . Christianity was everywhere
Feinstein, Elaine. It Goes with the Territory. Alma, 2013.
37
in the syllabus and...
Education Constance Garnett
Following her mother's death, Constance was sent to Brighton High School , a boarding school where she was forced to sleep by herself since she refused to say prayers at night. There she continued studying...
Friends, Associates Rosamund Marriott Watson
She forged friendships with other women writers, including Mona Caird , E. Nesbit , Mathilde Blind , Amy Levy , and Alice Meynell . She was also a friend of William Sharp , Austin Dobson
Friends, Associates Katharine Tynan
Other women writers present at the meeting were Amy Levy , Mathilde Blind , Clementina Black , and Graham Tomson (later Rosamund Marriott Watson) .
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder, 1913.
331
Friends, Associates Clementina Black
Besides her friendship with Eleanor MarxCB became close friends with Amy Levy , whom she met in London in the late 1870s. She introduced Levy's work Xantippe to publishers.
Cameron, Mary. “Clementina Black: A Character Sketch”. The Young Woman, Vol.
1
, 1892–1893, pp. 315-16.
315
When Levy committed suicide...
Friends, Associates Vernon Lee
The young poet Amy Levy was a guest at the Florence home of VL ; Levy was at once emotionally drawn to Lee.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press, 2000.
119
Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press, 2003.
119
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Levy
Friends, Associates Mathilde Blind
One of her travelling companions (and a close friend) was the New Woman novelist Mona Caird (famous for her declaration calling the institution of marriage a vexatious failure in the Westminster Review in 1888).
qtd. in
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
38
Friends, Associates Beatrice Webb
Beatrice Potter (the future Beatrice Webb) became a friend of Amy Levy during the 1880s through their shared use of the ladies' lunch room at the British Museum , where a group developed of young...
Intertextuality and Influence Germaine de Staël
After completing this novel GS wrote, I'd like a really big [writing] table, it seems to me I've got the right to it now.
qtd. in
Kobak, Annette. “Mme de Staël and Fanny Burney”. The Burney Journal, Vol.
4
, 2001, pp. 12-35.
19
Corinne was enormously influential for nineteenth-century women writers. The model...
Intertextuality and Influence Louisa May Alcott
Following her death, G. K. Chesterton in a laudatory (if sexist) review classed LMA with Austen as an early realist, and praised her apt depictions of human truths.
Chesterton, G. K. “Louisa Alcott”. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine B. Stern, G. K. Hall, 1984, pp. 212-14.
213-14
She was a favourite writer...
Intertextuality and Influence Percy Bysshe Shelley
For generations PBS appeared the quintessential image of the Romantic poet, whose work influenced such poets as Mathilde Blind , Amy Levy , Alice Meynell , Sarojini Naidu —though for some of them he was...
Intertextuality and Influence Beatrice Harraden
The epigraph, she said, came from an (unidentified) old English author.
qtd. in
Galbraith,. “Things Literary in London Gossip”. New York Times, 21 Mar. 1908.
It reads (slightly differently rendered in different versions): And there was moche playe and entreplaye of musick, divers instrumentys makyng mynstralsy with eche other...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Montefiore
In an article in the Jewish Chronicle two years afterCM died, Abraham Benisch wrote in praise of nineteenth-century Jewish women writers. He asserted that it is a remarkable phenomenon on the horizon of Anglo-Jewish...

Timeline

2 May 1857: A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened...

Building item

2 May 1857

A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .
Barwick, George. The Reading Room of the British Museum. Ernest Benn, 1929.
65, 71, 88, 102, 104-5, 136, 139
Walkowitz, Judith R. City of Dreadful Delight. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
69

Texts

Levy, Amy. A London Plane-Tree. T. Fisher Unwin, 1889.
Levy, Amy. A Minor Poet. T. Fisher Unwin, 1884.
Levy, Amy. Miss Meredith. Hodder and Stoughton, 1889.
Levy, Amy. Reuben Sachs. Macmillan, 1889.
Levy, Amy. Reuben Sachs. Editor Bernstein, Susan David, Broadview Press, 2006.
Levy, Amy. The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, 1861-1889. Editor New, Melvyn, University Press of Florida, 1993.
Levy, Amy. The Romance of a Shop. T. Fisher Unwin, 1888.
Levy, Amy. Xantippe. E. Johnson, 1881.