Ethel Smyth

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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.
246
As a passionate suffragist, ES wrote to show how these wretched sex-considerations were really the fashioning factor of my life.
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.
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.
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.
Black and white photograph of Ethel Smyth, shown from the shoulders up. She is wearing a tweed suit jacket with a white shirt underneath and a tie. Her dark is pulled into a bun on the top of her head.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Rebecca West
RW was introduced by Virginia Woolf to Ethel Smyth , whom she had ardently looked forward to meeting; West and Smyth discussed Emmeline Pankhurst , about whom they had both been writing.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 254, 259
Friends, Associates Virginia Woolf
VW met and began a friendship with Ethel Smyth , a generation older than herself: composer, author, militant suffragist, former close friend and future biographer of Emmeline Pankhurst .
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
128
politics Virginia Woolf
VW appeared with Ethel Smyth on the platform of the London and National Society for Women's Service (LNSWS, later renamed the Fawcett Society in honour of Millicent Garrett Fawcett ).
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus.
598
Author summary Virginia Woolf
Thousands of readers over three or four generations have known that Virginia Woolf was—by a beadle—denied access to the library of a great university. They may have known, too, that she was a leading intellect...
politics Virginia Woolf
Virginia's work consisted mainly of addressing envelopes, and she committed herself only to some weeks of this at the beginning and end of 1910. But she was also associated with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
politics Virginia Woolf
VW was especially devastated by the effects of Nazi air raids on London. She had been inspired by her street haunting for many years, but was now deeply troubled by her views of the...
Reception Virginia Woolf
VW wrote to Ethel Smyth that the stories were diversions or treats I allowed myself when I had done my exercise in the conventional style.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
4: 231
An Unwritten Novel, she said, showed her...
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...
Reception Virginia Woolf
VW feared this would be thought a dull meticulous book. She declined to send Ethel Smyth a copy, supposing that it would be puzzling and frustrating to someone who had not known its subject. She...

Timeline

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Texts

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