Sappho

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Standard Name: Sappho
Birth Name: Sappho
Used Form: Sapho
Sappho , the female poet who stands at the head of the lyric tradition in Europe, has been a major figure of identification, of desire, of influence, of adulation, and of opprobrium in British women's writing, though little remains of her texts. All of her estimated 12,000 lines of verse has been lost except a handful of complete poems and many fragments, either quotations of her work by other writers, or scraps deciphered from papyri used to wrap mummies in ancient Egypt. This mutilated body of work amounts to somewhere around seven hundred intelligible lines.
Circular portrait from a fresco in ancient Pompeii, popularly identified as Sappho though it probably portrays a high-society Pompeian lady. She is clad in blue, green, and purple, with a gold net over her short, curly hair, and large gold hoop earrings. She holds a wax tablet and a stylus ready for writing. bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbNaples National Archaeological Museum.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Leisure and Society Felicia Hemans
She wrote of Paganini 's playing that its predominant expression was that of overpowering, passionate regret . . . it seemed as if the musician was himself about to let fall his instrument, and sink...
Leisure and Society Rumer Godden
Her literary standards of judgement were high. Among women poets she accorded major status only to Sappho , Christina Rossetti , Emily Dickinson —not Elizabeth Barrett Browning —and to the more recent Edith Sitwell and Marianne Moore .
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. Macmillan, 1987.
218 and n
Leisure and Society L. E. L.
Soon after LEL left her mother's house, rumours of an illicit relationship with Jerdan began. The Sunday Times of 5 March 1826 intimated that a well-known English Sappho had produced a child two years previously...
Literary responses Ann Yearsley
Elizabeth Isabella Spence , reporting on a visit to Bristol, mentions AY as an example of an obscure woman writer of genius.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Summer Excursions. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809, 2 vols.
71
In 1990 Donna Landry wrote of her complex contradictions under the heading...
Literary responses L. E. L.
The volume firmly established her trademark theme of the doomed romantic female poet, and this persona was strongly identified with LEL herself. Her Victorian biographer Laman Blanchard claimed that LEL and Sappho were voted one...
Literary responses Frances Ridley Havergal
The Reverend Charles Tennyson Turner offered high praise for several of FRH 's poems and noted that Miss Havergal, Sappho and Mrs Browning constitute my present female trio. There may be others lying perdues to...
Literary responses Sarah Wentworth Morton
During her lifetime SWM was seen as standing at the head of a national tradition of women's writing: in 1791 she was flattered with the honorific titles of both the Sappho and the Elizabeth Montagu
Literary responses Mary Matilda Betham
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote To Matilda Betham from a Stranger (later published privately), wishing that she might be as impassioned as Sappho —but holier and happier.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age. Woodstock Books, 1997.
202
Literary responses Queen Elizabeth I
The immense and long-lasting interest aroused by Elizabeth is not, of course, primarily due to her writings, any more than were the adulation paid her during her lifetime, the cult of Gloriana, the Virgin Queen...
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
FH was so popular overseas that she was strongly associated, in the mind of Wordsworth at least, with a US audience. Her poems, particularly the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England from Records...
Literary responses Susanna Blamire
The reviewer of this collection in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal unoriginally but flatteringly called SB the Cumbrian Sappho.
qtd. in
Kushigian, Nancy, and Stephen C. Behrendt, editors. Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
Chorley also wrote the note on FH in The Authors of England: A Series of Medallion Portraits, 1838, claiming for her a place of honour
Chorley, Henry Fothergill, and Achille Collas. The Authors of England. Charles Tilt, 1838.
1
among those treated there, strongly praising The Forest...
Literary responses Laurence Hope
A number of evaluations of Hope's work appeared at her death. Thomas Hardy 's obituary for her, printed in the Athenæum, praised the tropical luxuriance and Sapphic fervour of The Garden of Káma...
Literary responses Fidelia
Next month commentators were busy. Jane Brereton as Melissa addressed both Elizabeth Carter (whom, in her turn, she supposed to be an anonymous male writer) and Fido, whom she assured that Fidelia ought to...
Literary responses Kathleen Raine
Graham Greene responded to this book with what he called an enthusiastic if ignorant howl. Though he had already seen and admired some of her poems, he wrote, he had not realised the quantity of...

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