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.
Smyth
helped her mount this first exhibition and several others, and she wrote a preface to the catalogue for the first one. The exhibitions were an important source of income for ES
.
Cronin, John. Somerville and Ross. Bucknell University Press.
88, 95
politics
Edith Somerville
Next February she wrote to Ethel Smyth
that the Black and Tans were worse than Sinn Féin
(the Republicans). Smyth, as an Englishwoman, found this hard to believe. When the Republicans took for themselves (virtually...
politics
Edith Somerville
Perhaps with Ethel Smyth
's encouragement, ES
signed a letter to the newspapers protesting at the mutilation of Joyce
's Ulysses by its American publishers.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
229
Leisure and Society
Edith Somerville
In her later years ES
set out to extend her reading. She tried Woolf
's A Room of One's Own (at the behest of Ethel Smyth
) and admired it. But she could not like...
Literary responses
Edith Somerville
It was well reviewed in The Times, and was reprinted four times by January 1918.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
183, 185
ES
received a letter of appreciation from Ethel Smyth
.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
185
Literary responses
Edith Somerville
Ethel Smyth
saw the book at proof stage, and was pleased; she praised it again in her Streaks of Life.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
189, 197
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Edith Somerville
Among other autobiographical topics, ES
writes here of following the hounds with the famous Quorn Hunt
of Leicestershire in England, and of holidays: in Sicily with Ethel Smyth
in 1920, and in Spain in...
Textual Production
Edith Somerville
ES
sold three book-manuscripts, to raise money, in 1934. But a voluminous collection of her papers, including diaries and letters by herself and her cousin MR, and letters from Ethel Smyth
, descended to two...
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.
188
Friends, Associates
Edith Somerville
Somerville and Smyth
became close friends, and visited and travelled together, though biographer Maurice Collis
thinks that Smyth
expected a sexual relationship where Somerville did not.
Collis, Maurice. Somerville and Ross: A Biography. Faber and Faber.
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...
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.
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...
