Edith Sitwell

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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.
Black and white, head-and-shoulders photograph of Edith Sitwell by Cecil Beaton, 1962. She wears her black ostrich-feather turban with taffeta standing up on top, a black long-sleeved blouse, and over it an elaborately folded white arrangement like wings. She rests her head between her hands, which are adorned with large, heavy rings.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Nancy Cunard
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 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...
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
Education Doreen Wallace
At Somerville DW became a close friend of Dorothy Sayers (their religious and political disagreements later drove them apart) and in her circle met Vera Brittain , Winifred Holtby , and theSitwells .
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 ...
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 Elizabeth Jenkins
Having met Edith Sitwell when she was an undergraduate (an acquaintance which she later kept up) EJ was asked by Pernel Strachey when she left Newnham whether she would like an invitation to Leonard and...
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 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 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 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

Timeline

1 January 1913: Harold Monro opened the Poetry Bookshop at...

Writing climate item

1 January 1913

Harold Monro opened the Poetry Bookshop at 35 Devonshire Street (now Boswell Street) in Bloomsbury.
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...

Building item

8 December 1936

The BBC for the first time televised a full-length ballet: William Walton 's Façade (derived from Edith Sitwell ) with Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann .
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 .
Billington, Michael. Peggy Ashcroft, 1907-1991. Mandarin, 1991.
212-13

Texts

Sitwell, Edith. A Poet’s Notebook. Macmillan, 1943.
Sitwell, Edith. Alexander Pope. Faber and Faber, 1930.
Sitwell, Edith. Aspects of Modern Poetry. Duckworth, 1934.
Sitwell, Edith. Bath. Faber and Faber, 1932.
Sitwell, Edith. Bucolic Comedies. Duckworth.
Sitwell, Edith. Clowns’ Houses. Blackwell.
Sitwell, Edith. Collected Poems. Macmillan, 1957.
Sitwell, Edith. Elegy on Dead Fashion. Duckworth.
Sitwell, Edith. English Women. William Collins, 1942.
Sitwell, Edith. Façade. Favil.
Sitwell, Edith. Fanfare for Elizabeth. Macmillan, 1946.
Sitwell, Edith. Gardeners and Astronomers. Macmillan, 1953.
Sitwell, Edith. Gold Coast Customs. Duckworth, 1929.
Sitwell, Edith. Green Song and Other Poems. Macmillan, 1944.
Sitwell, Edith. I Live under a Black Sun. Gollancz, 1937.
Sitwell, Edith, and Bryher. “Introduction”. The Fourteenth of October, Collins, 1954, pp. 3-5.
Greene, Richard, and Edith Sitwell. “Introduction”. Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell, Virago Books, 1997, p. v - viii.
Sitwell, Edith. Planet and Glow-Worm, a Book for the Sleepless. Macmillan, 1944.
Sitwell, Edith. Rustic Elegies. Duckworth.
Sitwell, Edith. Selected Letters of Edith Sitwell. Editor Greene, Richard, Virago Books, 1997.
Sitwell, Edith. Selected Poems. Penguin, 1952.
Sitwell, Edith. Street Songs. Macmillan, 1942.
Sitwell, Edith. Taken Care Of: An Autobiography. Hutchinson, 1965.
Sitwell, Edith. The American Genius. J. Lehmann, 1951.
Sitwell, Edith, editor. The Atlantic Book of British and American Poetry. Little, Brown, 1958.