Amy Levy

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Standard Name: Levy, Amy
Birth Name: Amy Levy
Pseudonym: Melissa
Pseudonym: A Maiden Aunt
AL was a precocious writer who died (in 1889) so young that all her work might in other circumstances be classed as juvenilia. She is a remarkable poet, melancholy but forceful and individual. Some of her short stories and essays, and one of her three novels, fall into her own categorization of pot-boilers; in others her artistic purpose is paramount. She was also a translator of German poetry. She is a writer of the urban and the modern, whose work is given extra interest by its sometimes painful engagement with her Jewish identity and with the position of Jews in the world of the English intelligentsia.

Connections

Connections Author name Sort descending Excerpt
Reception Grace Aguilar
It is hard to trace influence among nineteenth-century Jewish women writers; this early piece of domestic realism presages the work of Amy Levy in Reuben Sachs, but Levy seems to have had no knowledge...
Intertextuality and Influence Louisa May Alcott
Following her death, G. K. Chesterton in a laudatory (if sexist) review classed LMA with Austen as an early realist, and praised her apt depictions of human truths.
Chesterton, G. K. “Louisa Alcott”. Critical Essays on Louisa May Alcott, edited by Madeleine B. Stern, G. K. Hall, pp. 212-14.
213-14
She was a favourite writer...
Literary responses Laurence Alma-Tadema
Amy Levy , who was deeply impressed by LAT 's appearance and presence, paid Love's Martyr a back-handed compliment: I think more of her book now that I have seen her.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
261 and n4
The...
Travel Clementina Black
In poor health, CB spent the autumn with a friend in Switzerland and then travelled to Florence with Amy Levy .
Glage, Liselotte. Clementina Black: A Study in Social History and Literature. Carl Winter.
21
Friends, Associates Clementina Black
Besides her friendship with Eleanor MarxCB became close friends with Amy Levy , whom she met in London in the late 1870s. She introduced Levy's work Xantippe to publishers.
Cameron, Mary. “Clementina Black: A Character Sketch”. The Young Woman, Vol.
1
, pp. 315-16.
315
When Levy committed suicide...
Travel Clementina Black
CB and Amy Levy travelled to Italy some time in 1881 or 1882.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
55
Friends, Associates Mathilde Blind
One of her travelling companions (and a close friend) was the New Woman novelist Mona Caird (famous for her declaration calling the institution of marriage a vexatious failure in the Westminster Review in 1888).
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research.
38
Education Emma Frances Brooke
Newnham College opened in September 1871 with Anne Jemima Clough as its principal, and with five pioneering students: Mary Paley (later Marshall , who encouraged Jane Ellen Harrison to follow her to Newnham), Edith Creak
Education Elaine Feinstein
She later felt she was lucky to be a postwar student; before then, she would have been as out of place at Newnham as Amy Levy . Christianity was everywhere
Feinstein, Elaine. It Goes with the Territory. Alma.
37
in the syllabus and...
Education Constance Garnett
Following her mother's death, Constance was sent to Brighton High School , a boarding school where she was forced to sleep by herself since she refused to say prayers at night. There she continued studying...
Intertextuality and Influence Beatrice Harraden
The epigraph, she said, came from an (unidentified) old English author.
Galbraith,. “Things Literary in London Gossip”. New York Times.
It reads (slightly differently rendered in different versions): And there was moche playe and entreplaye of musick, divers instrumentys makyng mynstralsy with eche other...
Textual Production Harriett Jay
Charles Marlowe's (HJ 's) and Robert Buchanan 's co-written comedy Shopwalker opened at the Vaudeville Theatre in London (where Jay had often acted), and it did well.
The title is sometimes given as...
Friends, Associates Vernon Lee
The young poet Amy Levy was a guest at the Florence home of VL ; Levy was at once emotionally drawn to Lee.
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
119
Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press.
119
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Levy
Cultural formation Vernon Lee
As early as 24 August 1887 VL was calling Kit her new love, or new life (adapting the title of a poem which had been written for Lee by Amy Levy ).
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
148
The two...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Montefiore
In an article in the Jewish Chronicle two years afterCM died, Abraham Benisch wrote in praise of nineteenth-century Jewish women writers. He asserted that it is a remarkable phenomenon on the horizon of Anglo-Jewish...

Timeline

2 May 1857: A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened...

Building item

2 May 1857

A grand dome designed by Panizzi was opened in what had been the central courtyard of the British Museum .

Texts

Levy, Amy. A London Plane-Tree. T. Fisher Unwin, 1889.
Levy, Amy. A Minor Poet. T. Fisher Unwin, 1884.
Levy, Amy. Miss Meredith. Hodder and Stoughton, 1889.
Levy, Amy. Reuben Sachs. Macmillan, 1889.
Levy, Amy. Reuben Sachs. Editor Bernstein, Susan David, Broadview Press, 2006.
Levy, Amy. The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, 1861-1889. Editor New, Melvyn, University Press of Florida, 1993.
Levy, Amy. The Romance of a Shop. T. Fisher Unwin, 1888.
Levy, Amy. Xantippe. E. Johnson, 1881.