Amy Levy
Template:Short description Template:DMCA Template:DMCA
Page Module:Infobox/styles.css has no content.
Amy Levy | |
|---|---|
| Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:InfoboxImage/data' not found. | |
| Born | Amy Judith Levy Script error: No such module "person date". Clapham, London, England |
| Died | Script error: No such module "person date". Endsleigh Gardens, London, England |
| Resting place | Balls Pond Road Cemetery |
| Occupation | Essayist, poet, novelist |
| Education | Page Template:Plainlist/styles.css has no content. |
Script error: No such module "Check for conflicting parameters".
Amy Judith Levy (10 November 1861 – 9 September 1889)Template:NoteTag was an English essayist, poet, and novelist. One of the first Jewish students at both Cambridge University and Newnham College, she wrote on the situation of Jews in Europe and the challenges facing women who sought independence in male-dominated society. She maintained close relationships with other women living what would be called a "New Woman" life, some of whom were lesbians.
Biography
Early life and education
Levy was born in Clapham, an affluent district of London, on 10 November 1861, to Lewis and Isobel Levy.[1] She was the second of seven children born into a Jewish family with a "casual attitude toward religious observance",[2]Template:Rp who sometimes attended a Reform synagogue in Upper Berkeley Street,[2]Template:Rp the West London Synagogue. As an adult, Levy continued to identify herself as Jewish and wrote for The Jewish Chronicle.[2]Template:Rp
Levy showed an interest in literature from an early age. At 13, she wrote a criticism of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's feminist work Aurora Leigh; at 14, Levy's first poem, "Ida Grey: A Story of Woman's Sacrifice", was published in the journal Pelican. Her family was supportive of women's education and encouraged Amy's literary interests; in 1876, she was sent to Brighton and Hove High School and later studied at Newnham College, Cambridge. Levy was the first Jewish student at Newnham when she arrived in 1879 but left before her final year.[2]Template:Rp
Her circle of friends included Clementina Black, Ellen Wordsworth Darwin, Dollie Radford, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx), and Olive Schreiner. While travelling in Florence in 1886, Levy met Vernon Lee, a fiction writer and literary theorist six years her senior, and fell in love with her.[3] Both women went on to explore the themes of sapphic love in their works. Lee inspired Levy's poem "To Vernon Lee".[citation needed]
Literary career
The Romance of a Shop (1888), Levy's first novel, is regarded as an early "New Woman" novel and depicts four sisters who experience the difficulties and opportunities afforded to women running a business in 1880s London.[4] Levy wrote her second novel, Reuben Sachs (1888), to fill the literary need for "serious treatment ... of the complex problem of Jewish life and Jewish character", which she identified and discussed in a 1886 article "The Jew in Fiction."[2]Template:R/superscript
Levy wrote stories, essays, and poems for popular or literary periodicals; the stories "Cohen of Trinity" and "Wise in Their Generation", both published in Oscar Wilde's magazine The Woman's World, are among her most notable. In 1886, Levy began writing a series of essays on Jewish culture and literature for The Jewish Chronicle, including The Ghetto at Florence, The Jew in Fiction, Jewish Humour, and Jewish Children.[citation needed]
Levy's works of poetry, including the daring A Ballad of Religion and Marriage, reveal her feminist concerns. Xantippe and Other Verses (1881) includes "Xantippe", a poem in the voice of Socrates's wife; the volume A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884) includes more dramatic monologues as well as lyric poems. Her final book of poems, A London Plane-Tree (1889), contains lyrics that are among the first to show the influence of French symbolism.[5]
Sexuality
Levy remains a topic of discussion amongst scholars in terms of whether or not she is to be considered a Victorian Lesbian writer. She had sent several poems to her friend Violet Paget, also known as Vernon Lee, confessing her love. These poems include her famous works "To Vernon Lee" and "New Love, New Life." Both of these pieces express messages of unrequited love to another woman. Scholars[who?] continue to debate if these gestures were that of friendship or intense passion.[citation needed]
Death
Levy experienced episodes of major depression from an early age. In her later years, her depression worsened in connection to her distress surrounding her romantic relationships and her awareness of her growing deafness. On 9 September 1889,[6] two months away from her 28th birthday, she died by suicide "at the residence of her parents ... [at] Endsleigh Gardens" by inhaling carbon monoxide.[7] Oscar Wilde wrote an obituary for her in The Women's World in which he praised her gifts.[8] The first Jewish woman to be cremated in England, her ashes were buried at Balls Pond Road Cemetery in London.[9]
Legacy
In 1993, Melyvn New produced a compilation of Levy's works, published as The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy: 1861–1889.[10] On November 13, 2025, University of Cambridge announced that they had acquired and unsealed Levy's personal archive, which includes letters, draft manuscripts, photographs and diary entries. The collection was previously owned by a private corporation.[11]
Selected works
- Xantippe and Other Verse (1881)
- A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884)
- The Romance of a Shop (1888) novel (republished in 2005 by Black Apollo Press)
- Reuben Sachs: A Sketch (1888) (republished in 2001 by Persephone Books)
- A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889)
- Miss Meredith (1889; a novel)
- The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy: 1861–1889 (1993)
- The Collected Poems (Sublunary Editions, 2023)
- Amy Levy: Collected Writings (Library of the Jewish People, 2023)
Notes
References
Page Template:Reflist/styles.css has no content.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Wagenknecht, Edward (1983). Daughters of the Covenant: Portraits of Six Jewish Women. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-0-87023-396-8.
- ^ a b c d e Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Beckman, Linda Hunt (2000). Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. ISBN 0-8214-1329-5 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Ledger, Sally (1997). The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-4093-1.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Bernstein, Susan David (2006). The Romance of a Shop. Broadview Press. ISBN 1-55111-566-2.
- ^ "Levy, Clemintina Black, and Liza of Lambeth", Emma Francis, in Naomi Hetherington and Nadia Valman (eds), Amy Levy: Critical Essays.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
TypoObituarywas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Levy, Amy; Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture. NcD; Leona Bowman Carpenter Collection of English and American Literature. NcD (8 February 1889). "A London plane-tree : and other verse". London : T. Fisher Unwin. Retrieved 8 February 2018 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ Modern British Poetry: A Critical Anthology (edited by Louis Untermeyer), 1920, 1925, 1930 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. (no ISBN), pp. 270–71.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Medd, Jodie, ed. (2015). The Cambridge Companion to Lesbian Literature. Cambridge University Press. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-107-05400-4. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Zatlin, Linda G. (Summer 1994). "The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy: 1861-1889". Studies in Short Fiction. 31 (3).
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Khomami, Nadia (13 November 2025). "'A girl of genius': archives unsealed of Amy Levy, queer Jewish writer admired by Oscar Wilde". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 13 November 2025. Retrieved 13 November 2025.
Further reading
- Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2000. Template:ISBN. At the Internet Archive
- Jusová, Iveta. The New Woman and the Empire. Columbus : Ohio State University Press, 2005. Template:ISBN. At the Internet Archive
- Flanders, Judith. The Victorian house: domestic life from childbirth to deathbed. London: HarperCollins, 2003. Template:ISBN. At the Internet Archive; published in the USA as Inside the Victorian Home: a Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Template:ISBN. At the Internet Archive
- Susan Bernstein, ed., Reuben Sachs [with introduction and other readings by Levy and others]. Broadview Press, 2006. Template:ISBN
- Susan Bernstein, ed., The Romance of a Shop [with introduction and other readings by Levy and others]. Broadview Press, 2006. Template:ISBN
External links
Page Module:Side box/styles.css has no content.Page Template:Sister project/styles.css has no content.
Page Module:Side box/styles.css has no content.Page Template:Sister project/styles.css has no content.
- Works by Amy Levy at Project Gutenberg
- Hurst, Isobel (17 March 2021). Amy Levy: A London Poet, Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation
- Diniejko, Andrzej. Amy Levy: A Tragic Late Victorian Anglo-Jewish Poet and Novelist: A Biographical Note at The Victorian Web, last modified 20 May 2025 (created 22 May 2012).
- Diniejko, Andrzej. Amy Levy: A Chronology at The Victorian Web, last modified 13 October 2016.
- Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy at the Jewish Women's Archive, 7 July 2021.
- Some Amy Levy poems Script error: No such module "webarchive". on Cordula's Web.
- Poems by Amy Levy.
- MP3 recording of Levy's novel Reuben Sachs: A Sketch from Librivox.org.
- Critical analysis of Levys's work at Enotes.
- Works by or about Amy Levy at the Internet Archive
- Works by Amy Levy at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) File:Speaker Icon.svgTemplate:EditAtWikidata
- Saylor, Zia. Who Owns a Story? Uncovering the Archives of Amy Levy. Blog post at the Jewish Women's Archive, 10 March 2026.
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Authority control/config' not found.
Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Navbox/configuration' not found.
