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
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
Reception L. E. L.
LEL became strongly associated with a highly gendered construction of female poetic vocation. As Virginia Blain has argued, she became (with Hemans , and following their deaths on the cusp of the era) one progenitor...
Reception Charlotte Lennox
The Gentleman's Magazine published two poems about this volume, one in June 1749 and one in November 1750. One calls the author Britain's Sappho .
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
19: 278; 20: 518
With the second piece the GM...
Reception Anna Akhmatova
AA arrived at Oxford for the conferring of a D.Litt. degree (at the instigation in part of Isaiah Berlin ); at the ceremony she was called the the Russian Sappho.
Feinstein, Elaine. Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005.
272
Haight, Amanda. Anna Akhmatova : A Poetic Pilgrimage. Oxford University Press, 1976.
189
Reception Ruth Pitter
During her lifetime RP was deeply appreciated by some readers. C. S. Lewis scatters through his letters such remarks as Whenever I re-read your poems, I blame myself for not re-reading them oftener.
King, Don W. “The Anatomy of a Friendship: the correspondence of Ruth Pitter and C. S. Lewis, 1946-1962: Mythlore, Summer 2003”. Findarticles.
2
Arthur Russell
Residence Edna St Vincent Millay
It was in urgent need of renovations which proved costly and exhausting. In time order was imposed: a bust of Sappho was set up, Millay's extensive book collection was shelved, and her even more extensive...
Textual Features Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
EOB writes in terms of a women's tradition: for instance, she praises Barbauld for praising Elizabeth Rowe . She makes confident judgements and attributions (she is sure that Lady Pakington is the real author of...
Textual Features Anne Wharton
AW 's To Mrs. A. Behn likens her to Sappho .
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...
Textual Features Rosamund Marriott Watson
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, 1901.
xi-xii
Textual Features Mary Robinson
MR 's preface quotes that of Charlotte Smith to her Elegiac Sonnets.
Robinson, Mary. “Introduction”. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems, edited by Judith Pascoe, Broadview, 2000, pp. 19-64.
45
She presents her own work as one of scholarship, explaining that by legitimate in her title she means the sonnet in...
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, 1901.
1-2
in British India. But this is largely unfulfilled...
Textual Features Anna Jane Vardill
AJV translates from Sappho , Anacreon , Alcæus , Theocritus , Horace , and more recent poets: Petrarch and Camoens . She includes several charity poems: the one already published in aid of the Refuge for the Destitute
Textual Features Marie Belloc Lowndes
In her reviewing capacity she was able to comment on several texts central to the European tradition of women's writing. She called Marie de Lafayette 's La Princesse de Cleves (re-issued as part of an...
Textual Features Judith Cowper Madan
The poem in its later version, headed with a quotation from Virgil , opens: Unequal, how shall I the search begin, / Or paint with artless hand the awful scene?
Concanen, Matthew, editor. The Flower-Piece. Walthoe, 1731.
130
JCM calls on the...

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