Sappho

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Standard Name: Sappho
Birth Name: Sappho
Used Form: Sapho
Sappho , the female poet who stands at the head of the lyric tradition in Europe, has been a major figure of identification, of desire, of influence, of adulation, and of opprobrium in British women's writing, though little remains of her texts. All of her estimated 12,000 lines of verse has been lost except a handful of complete poems and many fragments, either quotations of her work by other writers, or scraps deciphered from papyri used to wrap mummies in ancient Egypt. This mutilated body of work amounts to somewhere around seven hundred intelligible lines.
Circular portrait from a fresco in ancient Pompeii, popularly identified as Sappho though it probably portrays a high-society Pompeian lady. She is clad in blue, green, and purple, with a gold net over her short, curly hair, and large gold hoop earrings. She holds a wax tablet and a stylus ready for writing. bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbNaples National Archaeological Museum.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
FH was so popular overseas that she was strongly associated, in the mind of Wordsworth at least, with a US audience. Her poems, particularly the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England from Records...
Literary responses Mary Matilda Betham
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote To Matilda Betham from a Stranger (later published privately), wishing that she might be as impassioned as Sappho —but holier and happier.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age. Woodstock Books.
202
Literary responses Felicia Hemans
Chorley also wrote the note on FH in The Authors of England: A Series of Medallion Portraits, 1838, claiming for her a place of honour
Chorley, Henry Fothergill, and Achille Collas. The Authors of England. Charles Tilt.
1
among those treated there, strongly praising The Forest...
Literary responses Laurence Hope
A number of evaluations of Hope's work appeared at her death. Thomas Hardy 's obituary for her, printed in the Athenæum, praised the tropical luxuriance and Sapphic fervour of The Garden of Káma...
Literary responses Susanna Blamire
The reviewer of this collection in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal unoriginally but flatteringly called SB the Cumbrian Sappho.
Kushigian, Nancy, and Stephen C. Behrendt, editors. Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period.
Literary responses Fidelia
Next month commentators were busy. Jane Brereton as Melissa addressed both Elizabeth Carter (whom, in her turn, she supposed to be an anonymous male writer) and Fido, whom she assured that Fidelia ought to...
Literary responses Kathleen Raine
Graham Greene responded to this book with what he called an enthusiastic if ignorant howl. Though he had already seen and admired some of her poems, he wrote, he had not realised the quantity of...
Literary responses Judith Cowper Madan
JCM reaped a good deal of praise during her lifetime, but most of it must have been of questionable value to her as a poet. Pope 's To Erinna is typical in casting her as...
Literary responses Lady Caroline Lamb
When Glenarvon first appeared, said Lady Caroline, William Lamb admired it so much that it was instrumental in bringing the separated couple back together.
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan,. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press.
2: 202
Joanna Baillie discerned its author's ability, but added, Her...
Literary responses Judith Cowper Madan
Roger Lonsdale in 1990 followed Falconer Madan in supposing that her child-bearing and the influence of John Wesley and the Methodists amounted to sufficient explanation for her ceasing to write. Valerie Rumbold suggested in 1996...
Literary responses Mary Whateley Darwall
Before the appearance of her first book, Mary Whateley was celebrated by a Walsall poet, Stephen Chatterton , for excelling Sappho 's odes. During the same period, in 1861, the Gentleman's Magazine published an exaggerated...
Literary responses Edna St Vincent Millay
William Marion Reedy , who read this collection in proof, thought it splendid work—all shot through with brightness; the air of the open world in it too.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
186
By this year, wrote Griffin Barry ...
Literary responses L. E. L.
The volume firmly established her trademark theme of the doomed romantic female poet, and this persona was strongly identified with LEL herself. Her Victorian biographer Laman Blanchard claimed that LEL and Sappho were voted one...
Literary responses Frances Ridley Havergal
The Reverend Charles Tennyson Turner offered high praise for several of FRH 's poems and noted that Miss Havergal, Sappho and Mrs Browning constitute my present female trio. There may be others lying perdues to...
Literary responses Mary Savage
The notice in the Critical Review reprinted MS 's prefatory essay on recent female improvements: Instead of the single Sappho of antiquity, we can muster many names of equal, and some of superior value, in...

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