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, 1959.
246
As a passionate suffragist, ES
wrote to show how these wretched sex-considerations were really the fashioning factor of my life.
qtd. in
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, 1990.
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.
qtd. in
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, 1990.
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, 1972.
88, 95
politics
Virginia Woolf
VW
was especially devastated by the effects of Nazi air raids on London. She had been inspired by her street haunting for many years, but was now deeply troubled by her views of the...
politics
Dodie Smith
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...
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.
Lee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
598
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, 1968.
229
politics
Virginia Woolf
Virginia's work consisted mainly of addressing envelopes, and she committed herself only to some weeks of this at the beginning and end of 1910. But she was also associated with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
Author summary
Virginia Woolf
Thousands of readers over three or four generations have known that Virginia Woolf was—by a beadle—denied access to the library of a great university. They may have known, too, that she was a leading intellect...
In a letter to Ethel Smyth
on 1 March 1937, Virginia Woolf
described this work as a manuscript thrust on us.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
6: 111
Publishing
Vernon Lee
Lee may have been introduced to the Woolfs by any one of a number of her London friends; in later years Virginia Woolf heard much more about her from their mutual friend Ethel Smyth
.
Reception
Virginia Woolf
VW
wrote to Ethel Smyth
that the stories were diversions or treats I allowed myself when I had done my exercise in the conventional style.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
4: 231
An Unwritten Novel, she said, showed her...
Reception
Virginia Woolf
VW
feared this would be thought a dull meticulous book. She declined to send Ethel Smyth
a copy, supposing that it would be puzzling and frustrating to someone who had not known its subject. She...
