Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ethel Smyth
-
Standard Name: Smyth, Ethel
Birth Name: Ethel Mary Smyth
All of ES
's writings are richly autobiographical. They provide an acute and open account of her experience as a woman entering a strictly delimited male field (in her case that of composing large-scale musical works). Her friend Vita Sackville-West
somewhat waspishly suggested that ESmight concisely have entitled her successive books ME ONE, ME TWO, ME THREE, and so on.
St John, Christopher. Ethel Smyth. Longmans, Green, 1959.
246
As a passionate suffragist, ES
wrote to show how these wretched sex-considerations were really the fashioning factor of my life.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
In particular, her work supports women in music, expresses her own frustrations with exclusion from English musical life, and analyses the complex of public interest, middlemen, and other conditions that I call the Machine.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
On 5 March 1912 EP
was again thrown into Holloway, along with a great many other suffragettes. During this incarceration she cultivated a friendship with composer Ethel Smyth
.
Pankhurst, Sylvia. The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst. Kraus Reprint, 1969.
As the play opens, Miss Appleyard believes that she sympathises with the anti cause and casually dismisses the dreadful Suffragists
Glover, Evelyn. “Miss Appleyard’s Awakening”. How the Vote Was Won: and Other Suffragette Plays, edited by Dale Spender and Carole Hayman, Methuen, 1985, pp. 115-24.
117
and their desire to involve themselves in politics. But a visit from Mrs Crabtree...
Intertextuality and Influence
Noel Streatfeild
Apple Bough, 1962 (illustrated by Margery Gill
, published as Traveling Shoes in the USA), is remarkable from a feminist point of view for the name of the youngest child in the central family...
Leisure and Society
Edith Somerville
In her later years ES
set out to extend her reading. She tried Woolf
's A Room of One's Own (at the behest of Ethel Smyth
) and admired it. But she could not like...
Literary responses
Edith Somerville
It was well reviewed in The Times, and was reprinted four times by January 1918.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber, 1968.
183, 185
ES
received a letter of appreciation from Ethel Smyth
.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber, 1968.
185
Literary responses
Edith Somerville
Ethel Smyth
saw the book at proof stage, and was pleased; she praised it again in her Streaks of Life.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber, 1968.
189, 197
Literary responses
Virginia Woolf
Ethel Smyth
sent her responses to this book by telegram on publication day: Book astounding so far. Agitatingly increases value of life. Two days later she sent: Final paragraph almost smashes machine of life with...
South Riding was enormously successful. It was chosen by the Book Society
as their Book of the Month for March, and sold 25,000 copies within the first three weeks of its publication. In 1937 it...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
There was a widespread feeling that VSW
had been too circumspect and scholarly. Virginia Woolf
told Vita that she found the book solid, strong, satisfactory
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 49
, but wished she had allowed herself a...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf
reported that she read it like a shark swallowing mackerel. I think its [sic] far better than Saint Joan, more masterly and controlled. She added: It must be a bestseller into the...
Literary responses
Enid Bagnold
Not surprisingly, the article came under attack from many directions. Dame Ethel Smyth
responded in the next issue of the Sunday Times: It surprises me that so brilliant an intelligence should not remember that...
Literary responses
Christopher St John
CSJ
's drama and music criticism drew admiration from Ethel Smyth
, who wrote in A Final Burning of Boats: I am acquainted with no more typical instance of a first-line female intelligence and how it works.
qtd. in
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
