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.
Time and Tide carried two excerpts from Woolf
's A Room of One's Own in November 1929, and the next year MHVR
wrote two series of articles on the treatment of women and gender in...
Textual Features
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda
MHVR
humbly considers herself merely a normal person,
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda,. This Was My World. Macmillan.
x
writing what she has seen with the eyes of the mind.
Margaret Haig, Viscountess Rhondda,. This Was My World. Macmillan.
xii
The work is not a complete reconstruction of her life, since it wraps...
On 5 March 1912 EP
was again thrown into Holloway, along with a great many other suffragettes. During this incarceration she cultivated a friendship with composer Ethel Smyth
.
Pankhurst, Sylvia. The Life of Emmeline Pankhurst. Kraus Reprint.
106
Family and Intimate relationships
Emmeline Pankhurst
By 1913, EP
had moved to live with composer Ethel Smyth
at her cottage in Woking. The latter hints at a sexual relationship in her book Female Pipings in Eden and suggests that this...
Family and Intimate relationships
Emmeline Pankhurst
She intended to spearhead a campaign to provide a better start in life for the illegitimate children of soldiers and reluctant mothers. (Ethel Smyth
tried to dissuade her, took it philosophically when she was...
death
Emmeline Pankhurst
A statue in her honour was unveiled in Victoria Tower Gardens on 6 March 1930; Dame Ethel Smyth
conducted The March of the Women at the ceremony. A portrait done by Georgina Brackenbury
hangs in...
Textual Features
Emmeline Pankhurst
Looking back on the texts of the suffrage movement, Virginia Woolf
contrasted EP
's still style
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 211
with the livelier one of Ethel Smyth
.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 210-11
Textual Features
Elizabeth Robins
Both Sides of the Curtain covers ER
's relations with the theatre knights Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree
and Sir Henry Irving
. According to Woolf (who found it a fascinating book, despite its portraits of...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
There was a widespread feeling that VSW
had been too circumspect and scholarly. Virginia Woolf
told Vita that she found the book solid, strong, satisfactory
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
6: 49
, but wished she had allowed herself a...
Literary responses
Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf
reported that she read it like a shark swallowing mackerel. I think its [sic] far better than Saint Joan, more masterly and controlled. She added: It must be a bestseller into the...
politics
Gladys Henrietta Schütze
Peter Schütze
, being Australian, thought it natural for women to have the vote, and understood that the tactic of violence was chosen only in desperation when everything else had failed.
Schütze, Gladys Henrietta. More Ha’pence Than Kicks. Jarrolds.
They participated against her stepfather's wishes. Dame Ethel Smyth
's rousing The March of the Women left a lasting impression on DS
, who received some applause herself in Trafalgar Square when a man asked...
Textual Production
Stevie Smith
SS
's list of requisites for a critic or reviewer goes like this: Attention, impartiality, and no regard for age or sex.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage.
173
In April 1941 she was reviewing for John O'London's, Country Life...
Friends, Associates
Edith Somerville
ES
first met Ethel Smyth
(and also Maurice Baring
), on the way to Lady Kenmare
's, Killarney House, County Kerry.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
