Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Edith Sitwell
-
Standard Name: Sitwell, Edith
Birth Name: Edith Louisa Sitwell
ES
was an important member of the modernist movement in England. She was primarily a poet and secondarily a literary critic, though her personal polemics, biographies, anthologies, letters, and autobiography all reflect her unique personality and power as a literary stylist.
Seven Poems by NC
appeared in Wheels, edited by Edith Sitwell
, the first in a series of six anthologies of new and experimental poetry by that title.
Chisholm, Anne. Nancy Cunard. Knopf, 1979.
36
Anthologization
Iris Tree
Edith Sitwell
included thirty-one poems by IT
in the first four cycles of her serial modernist verse anthology, Wheels.
Sitwell, Edith, editor. Wheels. B. H. Blackwell, Dec. 1916.
prelims
Education
Anne Ridler
She lived in a King's College hostel in Queensborough Terrace near Hyde Park,London. The course included lectures on history and literature. The distinguished scholar Jack Isaacs
lectured on Shakespeare
, Donne
, and Milton
Leonardi, Susan J. Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists. Rutgers University Press, 1989, 254 p.
57
Education
Jeni Couzyn
JC
describes her younger self as a solitary child, rebellious and defiant, challenging everything and everyone.
Couzyn, Jeni, editor. The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe Books, 1985.
217
Some poets became important to her in her youth through the influence of her sisters: Dylan Thomas
...
Education
Rumer Godden
RG
's determination to become a writer fuelled a continued self-education. Books were hard to come by in India, yet she managed to find and devour recent publications: Edith Sitwell
's Troy Park and Façade...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jeni Couzyn
Jeni's sisters offered early poetic encouragement, and provided a connection between literature, as learned in school, and poems written privately. When she was about fifteen, JC
remembers one of her sisters giving her two LP...
Family and Intimate relationships
Viola Tree
VT
's two sisters were Felicity, later Lady Cory-Wright
, and the much younger poet, playwright, and actress Iris Tree
. Iris, who looked up to, admired, and adored Viola, published three volumes of poetry...
Friends, Associates
Carson McCullers
CMC
made a strong and enduring friendship in her forties with Mary Mercer
, a therapist who treated her for depression. Other friends made in her late years were Edward Albee
and John Huston
...
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
By the time of the move to Tavistock Square, VW
began to socialize more than she had in years. She circulated with Bloomsbury familiars and (re)acquainted herself with Rebecca West
, Rose Macaulay
,...
Friends, Associates
Pamela Hansford Johnson
Friends made in New York included PHJ
's publisher Charles Scribner
, as well as Diana
and Lionel Trillingwhom I loved, but always found a little intimidating.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner, 1974.
45
At home her literary friends included...
Friends, Associates
Sybille Bedford
Introduced to Aldous Huxley
and his wife Maria
by the South African poet Roy Campbell
while at Sanary, the young SB
became their intimate friend.
Bedford, Sybille. Quicksands. Counterpoint, 2005.
249-50
She was later embarrassed by her earlier admiration for...
Friends, Associates
Dylan Thomas
DT
's huge roster of friends in London included the American writer Emily Holmes Coleman
and his most significant early patron, Edith Sitwell
. Before Sitwell reviewed his early poems he had mocked her in...
Friends, Associates
Charlotte Mew
CM
refused an invitation to visit Edith Sitwell
after they met at the Bookshop
in 1919.
Warner, Val. “New Light on Charlotte Mew”. PN Review, Vol.
24
, No. 1, 1997, pp. 43-7.
46
Fitzgerald, Penelope. Charlotte Mew and Her Friends. Collins, 1984, p. 240 pp.
191
Friends, Associates
Amabel Williams-Ellis
AWE
's friends and associates included Edith Sitwell
, whose poems she often published in The Spectator; Storm Jameson
, a political mentor
Williams-Ellis, Amabel. All Stracheys Are Cousins. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983.
Fitzgerald, Penelope. Charlotte Mew and Her Friends. Collins, 1984, p. 240 pp.
142-9
Grant, Joy. Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.
60, 81-3
January 1933: The first number appeared of the periodical...
Writing climate item
January 1933
The first number appeared of the periodical New Verse, edited by Geoffrey Grigson
; it ran until May 1939.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Early 1936: The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by...
Writing climate item
Early 1936
The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts
(who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot
), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...
8 December 1936: The BBC for the first time televised a full-length...
Briggs, Asa. The BBC: The First Fifty Years. Oxford University Press, 1985.
372
December 1965: Actress Peggy Ashcroft toured Norway with...
Women writers item
December 1965
Actress Peggy Ashcroft
toured Norway with a show of her own devising, Words on Women and Some Women's Words, originally written for performance at London University
.