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.
Printing of the book was limited to one hundred copies. (Robert Browning
received no. 2.) It was beautifully bound in vellum and printed in two ink colours: MF
's poems in black and Sappho
Intertextuality and Influence
Michael Field
They were greatly influenced in their writing of this book by Henry Thornton Wharton
's recent Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation. Containing John Addington Symonds
' translation of Sappho
's...
Intertextuality and Influence
Michael Field
The preface calls Sappho the one woman who has dared to speak unfalteringly of the fearful mastery of love.
Field, Michael. Long Ago. G. Bell and Sons.
Each of the poems that follow begins with an epigraph from Sappho
Titles are numbers, given...
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...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Fenton
Fenton sets out to paint a a familiar picture of the everyday occurrences, manners, and habits of life of persons undistinguished either by wealth or fame
Fenton, Elizabeth. The Journal of Mrs. Fenton. Editor Lawrence, Sir Henry, Edward Arnold.
1-2
in British India. But this is largely unfulfilled...
Fictionalization
Violet Fane
In 1877 Fane's Sincere Friend
Mallock, W. H. The New Republic. Scribner and Welford.
prelims
W. H. Mallock
dedicated his roman à clef The New Republic; or, Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House to her .
Mallock, W. H. Memoirs of Life and Literature. Chapman and Hall.
96
She is said to...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Elstob
EE
's first publication consists of a fairly short essay with some poems to fill out the volume. She celebrates Scudéry as a Sappho
(one of Scudéry's strong female characters is Sapho) and as...
Literary responses
Queen Elizabeth I
The immense and long-lasting interest aroused by Elizabeth is not, of course, primarily due to her writings, any more than were the adulation paid her during her lifetime, the cult of Gloriana, the Virgin Queen...
Performance of text
Maureen Duffy
MD
wrote a dramatic monologue to be spoken by Sappho
(whose poems she had just been writing about), which was performed in London in 2010.
Duffy, Maureen. “My Life with Aphra Behn”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
19
, No. 2.
244
Intertextuality and Influence
Maureen Duffy
Living her afterlife on Mount Parnassus, Duffy's Sappho
is familiar with women poets who have written in English: her favourite is Aphra Behn
.
Duffy, Maureen. “My Life with Aphra Behn”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
19
, No. 2.
244
Publishing
Maureen Duffy
After this came Paper Wings, published in late 2014 in a limited edition of 100 copies in spiral binding. This resulted from an installation of the same title, shown by Enitharmon Press
in an...
Textual Production
Maureen Duffy
MD
published with Sappho Publications
(which also published the lesbian magazine Sappho, 1972-81, on behalf of the London lesbian social club of that name) another volume of poetry, entitled Evesong.
Duffy, Maureen. Collected Poems. Hamish Hamilton.
prelims, xv
Murdoch, Iris. Living on Paper. Editors Horner, Avril and Ann Rowe, Chatto and Windus.
401
Textual Production
Emily Dickinson
Their correspondence began when ED
responded to an article Higginson wrote in the Atlantic Monthly entitled Letter to a Young Contributor, which was mostly devoted to describing the proper way to submit an unsolicited...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emily Dickinson
Among our contemporary poets, Adrienne Rich
has offered this reading of ED
's life and works: Emily Dickinson—viewed by her bemused contemporary Thomas Higginson as partially cracked, by the twentieth century as fey or...
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...
