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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.
Connections
| Connections Sort descending | Author name | Excerpt |
|---|---|---|
| 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, 1997. 202 |
| 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 | Susanna Blamire | The reviewer of this collection in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal unoriginally but flatteringly called SB
the Cumbrian Sappho. qtd. in Kushigian, Nancy, and Stephen C. Behrendt, editors. Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period. |
| Literary responses | Felicia Hemans | |
| 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 | 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... |
| names | Anne Bradstreet |
|
| Other Life Event | Alison Uttley | She had precognitive dreams, including one about Sappho
. |
| Performance of text | Natalie Clifford Barney | NCB
's Equivoque, a play about Sappho
, was privately performed in her garden. Causse, Michèle. Berthe ou un demi-siècle auprès de l’Amazone. Tierce, 1980. 249 |
| 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, 13 Feb. 2012. 244 |
| Author summary | Sarah Lewis | Sarah Anna Lewis
was a mid-nineteenth-century American poet who is today better known for her association with Edgar Allan Poe
than for her writings. She began her career with frequent periodical publications, then published four... |
| Author summary | Michael Field | As MF
, Katharine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper published twenty-seven tragedies, mostly verse dramas on historical or classical subjects. Only one of their plays was staged, and it received poor reviews. Their unique literary... |
| Publishing | Michael Field | 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 |
| Publishing | Mary Lamb | Mary Lamb
's poem A Lady's Sapphic, an attempt to render Sappho
's style and metre in English, was anonymously printed in The Champion. Prance, Claude Annett. Companion to Charles Lamb: A Guide to People and Places, 1760-1847. Mansell, 1983. 188 |
Timeline
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Texts
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