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
Textual Features Natalie Clifford Barney
In L'amour défenduNCB defends the proposition that only love is important, not the sex to whom it is directed.
Barney, Natalie Clifford, and Karla Jay. A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. Translator Anna Livia, New Victoria Publishers, 1992.
85
She argues that every person possesses both masculine and feminine principles: We should not...
Textual Features L. E. L.
LEL's poetic persona in her title poem is deeply indebted to Germaine de Staël 's highly influential Corinne (1807), which depicts the contemporary woman artist as a spontaneous performer of verse to her own musical...
Textual Features Jeanette Winterson
The novel's three apparently unconnected characters are breast surgeon Handel (erstwhile boy chorister, castrato, and Catholic priest; not the same as yet reminiscent of George Frederick Handel ), Picasso (a young woman whose family opposes...
Textual Features L. E. L.
However, LEL's version of the narratives of her female precursors presents a complex layering of voices framed by that of her Florentine improvisatrice. Even though the speaker has poured [her] full and burning heart /...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Textual Features Anne Wharton
AW 's To Mrs. A. Behn likens her to Sappho .
Textual Features Rosamund Marriott Watson
Her introduction demonstrates a good knowledge of ancient Greek poetry and its publication history. In addition to selections by Plato and Theocritus , the book includes single poems by Sappho and Erinna .
Watson, Rosamund Marriott, editor. Selections from the Greek Anthology. W. Scott, 1901.
xi-xii
Textual Features Elizabeth Elstob
EE 's first publication consists of a fairly short essay with some poems to fill out the volume. She celebrates Scudéry as a Sappho (one of Scudéry's strong female characters is Sapho) and as...
Textual Features Mary Robinson
MR 's preface quotes that of Charlotte Smith to her Elegiac Sonnets.
Robinson, Mary. “Introduction”. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems, edited by Judith Pascoe, Broadview, 2000, pp. 19-64.
45
She presents her own work as one of scholarship, explaining that by legitimate in her title she means the sonnet in...
Textual Features Anna Jane Vardill
AJV translates from Sappho , Anacreon , Alcæus , Theocritus , Horace , and more recent poets: Petrarch and Camoens . She includes several charity poems: the one already published in aid of the Refuge for the Destitute
Textual Features Elizabeth Fenton
Fenton sets out to paint a a familiar picture of the everyday occurrences, manners, and habits of life of persons undistinguished either by wealth or fame
Fenton, Elizabeth. The Journal of Mrs. Fenton. Editor Lawrence, Sir Henry, Edward Arnold, 1901.
1-2
in British India. But this is largely unfulfilled...
Textual Production Mary Bailey
She was mistaken in believing this to be a first: several translations had appeared, often together with the surviving poems of Sappho and occasionally with other poets as well, as in the version by Thomas Stanley
Textual Production Anne Bradstreet
His long, descriptive title begins: The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung up in America; or, Severall Poems, Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning, Full of Delight, before going to enumerate the major poems...
Textual Production Clara Reeve
Over the signature C. R., she asserted that women writing were a sign of the rapid progress of the present age towards the refinements of civilization.
qtd. in
The Lady’s Magazine. J. Wheble.
8 (1777): 538
Instead of the single Sappho
Textual Production Anne Dacier
The future AD issued a translation unconnected with the Delphin project and through a different publisher: Les Poésies d'Anacréon et de Sapho , traduites de grec en français.
Grosperrin, Jean-Philippe, and Christine Dousset-Seiden, editors. “Les époux Dacier: une bibliographie”. Littératures classiques: les époux Dacier, Honoré Champion, 2010, pp. 259-86.
262

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