Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sappho
-
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.
In the added lines AY
modifies her original opinion that true friendship is impossible if the friends are not equals in rank. In the last of these poems (a complex discussion of the issue of...
Literary responses
Ann Yearsley
Elizabeth Isabella Spence
, reporting on a visit to Bristol, mentions AY
as an example of an obscure woman writer of genius.
Spence, Elizabeth Isabella. Summer Excursions. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme.
71
In 1990 Donna Landry
wrote of her complex contradictions under the heading...
Intertextuality and Influence
Lady Mary Wroth
Interspersed in the body of Urania are fifty-nine poems and sonnets. As printed, the book concludes with three sonnet sequences comprising a further eighty-three sonnets and eighteen songs, in a freshly paginated section. These sequences...
Textual Features
Jeanette Winterson
The novel's three apparently unconnected characters are breast surgeon Handel (erstwhile boy chorister, castrato, and Catholic priest; not the same as yet reminiscent of George Frederick Handel
), Picasso (a young woman whose family opposes...
death
Anna Wickham
Although AW
's suicide came with little warning, she showed, in an unfinished autobiography written more than ten years earlier, a portentous awareness of a tradition of suicide among women poets: There have been few...
Her introduction demonstrates a good knowledge of ancient Greek poetry and its publication history. In addition to selections by Plato
and Theocritus
, the book includes single poems by Sappho
and Erinna
.
Watson, Rosamund Marriott, editor. Selections from the Greek Anthology. W. Scott.
xi-xii
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Jane Vardill
Her Attic Chest poems have an erudite flavour. She replies to Anacreon
, writes A New Epistle from Sappho
to Phaon, and signs other poems Aulus Gellius
(author of the Latin Attic Nights)...
At Manchester, AU
lived in the women's residence, Ashburne House. Formative teachers in her life included Hilda Oakeley
Oakeley, a Somerville College graduate and a close friend of Eleanor Rathbone
, had a great impact...
Other Life Event
Alison Uttley
She had precognitive dreams, including one about Sappho
.
Characters
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
In the society that Morgan depicts, the Irish Catholic gentry are mostly absent, scattered in European exile. The peasantry, dirt-poor but generous-hearted, include Tim O'Leary, schoolmaster of a hedge school, scholar and expert in Irish...
Textual Production
Stevie Smith
Someone suggested that SS
should translate Sappho
, but she responded that I can't make head nor tail of that ancient girl.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage.
ES
loved Christina Rossetti
from her childhood, and later thoroughly admired Gertrude Stein
. As a young woman, however, she believed: Women's poetry, with the exception of Sappho
. . . and Goblin MarketChristina Rossetti
and...
Textual Production
Arabella Shore
It reprints some old and presents some new work, including a version of the popular Last Song of Sappho. Death and Immortality, the lead piece in the collection, was the last she had...
Timeline
Later 8th century BC: This time probably saw the genesis of Homer's...
Writing climate item
Later 8th century BC
This time probably saw the genesis of Homer's Iliad, though few dates are more hotly argued over, and the very existence of Homer as a person who created (traditional, formulaic, oral) epicpoems is arguable.
1555: French poet Louise Labé (c. 1520-1566), a...
Writing climate item
1555
French poetLouise Labé
(c. 1520-1566), a salonnière in the city of Lyons, daughter and wife of rope-makers, published her Oeuvres at Lyons.
1691: William Walsh published anonymously A Dialogue...
Writing climate item
1691
William Walsh
published anonymously A Dialogue Concerning Women, Being a Defence of the Sex, Written to Eugenia.
1764: German labouring-class poet Anna Luise Karsch...
Writing climate item
1764
German labouring-class poet Anna Luise Karsch
first reached print with four separate publications at Berlin, most importantly a collection, Auserlesene Gedichte (edited for publication by J. G. Sulzer
).
1886: Eva Hope's Queens of Literature of the Victorian...
1968: Peter Jay founded Anvil Press Poetry, which...
Writing climate item
1968
Peter Jay
founded Anvil Press Poetry
, which by the early twenty-first century was based in Greenwich in south-east London, and described itself as England's longest-standing independent poetry publisher.
April 1972: Sappho began monthly publication in London...
Building item
April 1972
Sappho began monthly publication in London as one of the few magazines written for and about lesbians.
November 1981: The lesbian magazineSappho ended publication...
Building item
November 1981
The lesbianmagazineSappho ended publication in London.
1992: The city of Leiden in the Netherlands initiated...
Writing climate item
1992
The city of Leiden in the Netherlands initiated its Tegen-Beeld
, or Wall Poems, by painting on a wall a poem by Marina Tsvetajeva
or Tsvetaeva: the design is important as well as the words.
April 2016: A bot, or Twitter account programmed to issue...
Writing climate item
April 2016
A bot, or Twitter
account programmed to issue a piece of writing divided into fragments of 140 characters or less, entitled Sappho
@sapphobot, was launched this month and became Twitter's most popular poetry bot (apart from...
Texts
Burn, Andrew R., and Sappho. “Foreword”. Lyrics in the Original Greek, translated by. Willis Barnstone and Willis Barnstone, New York University Press, 1965, p. vii - xiii.
Burn, Andrew R. et al. “Introduction”. Lyrics in the Original Greek, translated by. Willis Barnstone, New York University Press, 1965, p. xvii - xxxi.
Sappho, and Anacreon. Les Poésies d’Anacréon et de Sapho. Translator Dacier, Anne, D. Thierry and C. Barbin, 1681.
Sappho, and Andrew R. Burn. Lyrics in the Original Greek. Translator Barnstone, Willis, New York University Press, 1965.