Edith Sitwell

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Standard Name: Sitwell, Edith
Birth Name: Edith Louisa Sitwell
ES was an important member of the modernist movement in England. She was primarily a poet and secondarily a literary critic, though her personal polemics, biographies, anthologies, letters, and autobiography all reflect her unique personality and power as a literary stylist.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Edith Sitwell by Cecil Beaton, 1962. She wears her black ostrich-feather turban with taffeta standing up on top, a black long-sleeved blouse, and over it an elaborately folded white arrangement like wings. She rests her head between her hands, which are adorned with large, heavy rings.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Vita Sackville-West
The enthusiastic review by J. C. Squire was not entirely welcome to VSW , since she regarded Squire as a silly old ass and all that.
qtd. in
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
167
She feared being relegated to the category of...
Literary responses Carson McCullers
In England, Edith Sitwell called CMCa transcendental writer, and V. S. Pritchettthe most remarkable novelist to come out of America for a generation.
qtd. in
Dews, Carlos L., and Carson McCullers. “Chronology and Notes”. Complete Novels, Library of America, Literary Classics of the United States, 2001, pp. 807-27.
815
The earliest full-length study of her, by Oliver Evans
Literary responses Lady Margaret Sackville
Whitney Womack has recently written that LMS 's war poetry should be read alongside the war poetry of Rupert Brooke , Edward Thomas , Wilfred Owen , Siegfried Sassoon , and Isaac Rosenberg , as...
Literary responses Dylan Thomas
Thomas's first slim volume virtually made his reputation, which its successor consolidated.
qtd. in
Phillips, Adam. “A Terrible Thing, Thank God”. London Review of Books, 4 Mar. 2004, pp. 22-4.
22
Well-known and respected reviewers were impressed, responding especially to the poems' palpable originality. The eminent Edith Sitwell became an instant admirer, and...
Literary responses Charlotte Mew
May Sinclair thought Madeleine magnificent, having depths & depths of passion & of sheer beauty.
qtd. in
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press, 2000.
191
She also enjoyed the high Victorian melodrama of Mew's reading aloud.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press, 2000.
192
Despite her efforts to bring The Farmer's...
Literary responses Lilian Bowes Lyon
Day-Lewis , though he wrote enthusiastically of individual poems, feared before this volume's publication to make exorbitant claims that would darken judgement.
Day-Lewis, Cecil, and Lilian Bowes Lyon. “Introduction”. Collected Poems, Jonathan Cape, 1948, pp. 11-16.
15
His championing of LBL 's work therefore tends to fall back on...
Literary responses Dylan Thomas
Reviewers were not quite so generally enthusiastic as over his first collection. Edith Sitwell , however, this time published a review in the Sunday Times, and her praise prompted an energetic correspondence which helped...
Literary responses Dorothy Wellesley
Yeats admired this volume for its explorations of the picturesque, for its love . . . for undisturbed Nature, a hatred for the abstract, the mechanical, the invented, and for an intensity which he saw...
Literary responses Christina Rossetti
As Rebecca W. Crump 's guide to publications on CR to 1973 reveals, her high reputation persisted after her death—she stood, according to Katharine Tynan ' article Santa Christina in 1912, head and shoulders above...
Literary responses Nina Hamnett
Crowley's counsel called the stories indecent, vulgar, and ignorant, and demanded that all copies already sold should be recalled and destroyed.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
4
NH then filed an affidavit saying that the stories were true according to...
Literary responses Penelope Mortimer
Edith Sitwell and Beverley Nichols testified to being enthralled
qtd. in
Mortimer, Penelope. About Time Too: 1940-1978. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1993.
71
by PM 's reviews in the Sunday papers.
Gordon, Giles. “Obituary: Penelope Mortimer”. Guardian Weekly, 28 Oct. 1999, p. 26.
26
Occupation Viola Tree
VT gave a concert at the Aeolian Hall in London. She sang French songs, including some by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel .
The Æolian Hall was the venue for Edith Sitwell 's notorious...
Occupation Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
She served as the club's organizer and hostess. She intended it as a space where fledgling writers could gather and make contact with established authors. Her friend J. D. Beresford , novelist, was the club's...
Occupation Nina Hamnett
Several of old friends (including Osbert and Edith Sitwell ) sat for Hamnett for their portraits. Edith Sitwell's portrait especially attracted a good deal of comment.
Hamnett, Nina. Laughing Torso. Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc., 1932.
98-9, 104-5
Occupation Gertrude Stein
Persuaded by Edith Sitwell and Harold Acton , GS agreed to a small lecture tour. She lectured about grammar and literature. She was apparently inspired to explicate her ideas on composition, rhythm, repetition and identity...

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