Ethel Smyth

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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.

Milestones

23 April 1858

ES was born at Sidcup in Kent.
St John, Christopher. Ethel Smyth. Longmans, Green.
1
Collis, Louise. Impetuous Heart: The Story of Ethel Smyth. William Kimber.
11
Smyth, Ethel. Impressions that Remained. Longmans, Green.
1: 23

22 June 1909

ES 's opera The Wreckers had its first full performance in English under conductor Thomas Beecham at His Majesty's Theatre , London.
Sadie, Julie Anne, and Rhian Samuel, editors. The New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers. Macmillan.
430, 431
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century.
342

Early June 1940

ES published What Happened Next, which completed her autobiography.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
2005 (6 June 1940): 324

8 May 1944

ES died after many years of failing health (including battles with diabetes, rheumatism, and deafness) at her home in Woking, Surrey. The immediate cause of death was pneumonia.
Collis, Louise. Impetuous Heart: The Story of Ethel Smyth. William Kimber.
204-5
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Birth and Influences

23 April 1858

ES was born at Sidcup in Kent.
St John, Christopher. Ethel Smyth. Longmans, Green.
1
Collis, Louise. Impetuous Heart: The Story of Ethel Smyth. William Kimber.
11
Smyth, Ethel. Impressions that Remained. Longmans, Green.
1: 23