Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Ethel Smyth
-
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.
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.
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...
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.
In a letter to Ethel Smyth
on 1 March 1937, Virginia Woolf
described this work as a manuscript thrust on us.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 111
Intertextuality and Influence
Noel Streatfeild
Apple Bough, 1962 (illustrated by Margery Gill
, published as Traveling Shoes in the USA), is remarkable from a feminist point of view for the name of the youngest child in the central family...
Textual Production
Christopher St John
CSJ
, Smyth's literary executor, published her Ethel Smyth
. A Biography, with additional chapters by Vita Sackville-West
and Kathleen Dale
.
British Book News. British Council.
(1959): 345
Auerbach, Nina. Ellen Terry: Player in Her Time. W.W. Norton.
CSJ
's drama and music criticism drew admiration from Ethel Smyth
, who wrote in A Final Burning of Boats: I am acquainted with no more typical instance of a first-line female intelligence and how it works.
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.
941
Timeline
17 June 1911: The Women's Coronation Procession was attended...
