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.
South Riding was enormously successful. It was chosen by the Book Society
as their Book of the Month for March, and sold 25,000 copies within the first three weeks of its publication. In 1937 it...
Literary responses
Christopher St John
CSJ
's drama and music criticism drew admiration from Ethel Smyth
, who wrote in A Final Burning of Boats: I am acquainted with no more typical instance of a first-line female intelligence and how it works.
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.
941
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...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Evelyn Glover
As the play opens, Miss Appleyard believes that she sympathises with the anti cause and casually dismisses the dreadful Suffragists
Glover, Evelyn. “Miss Appleyard’s Awakening”. How the Vote Was Won: and Other Suffragette Plays, edited by Dale Spender and Carole Hayman, Methuen, pp. 115-24.
117
and their desire to involve themselves in politics. But a visit from Mrs Crabtree...
Intertextuality and Influence
Noel Streatfeild
Apple Bough, 1962 (illustrated by Margery Gill
, published as Traveling Shoes in the USA), is remarkable from a feminist point of view for the name of the youngest child in the central family...
Friends, Associates
Emmeline Pankhurst
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
Friends, Associates
Vernon Lee
VL
and Ethel Smyth
began a lasting friendship when they were introduced at the Windsor home of Lady Mary Ponsonby
.
Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press.
Wellesley, Dorothy. Far Have I Travelled. James Barrie.
133
In the years after the war she formed her important...
Friends, Associates
Rebecca West
RW
was introduced by Virginia Woolf
to Ethel Smyth
, whom she had ardently looked forward to meeting; West and Smyth discussed Emmeline Pankhurst
, about whom they had both been writing.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press.
5: 254, 259
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
VW
met and began a friendship with Ethel Smyth
, a generation older than herself: composer, author, militant suffragist, former close friend and future biographer of Emmeline Pankhurst
.
Bishop, Edward. A Virginia Woolf Chronology. Macmillan.
128
Friends, Associates
Constance Lytton
From two days after her stroke until September 1918 she had the joy of a perfect nurse,Nurse Oram
.
Lytton, Constance. Letters of Constance Lytton. Editor Elizabeth Edith, Countess of Balfour, Heinemann.
236-7
That summer CL
realised that we loved each other, and no mistake. From that...
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.
