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.
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
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.
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.
272
Haight, Amanda. Anna Akhmatova : A Poetic Pilgrimage. Oxford University Press.
189
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...
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 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
Lady Margaret Sackville
She set most of her early poems in exotic places. More than one critic has heard the influence of Sappho
in what are sometimes called LMS
's Hellenic verses. In A Hymn to Dionysus...
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...
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
Angela Brazil
Girls in these books sew, roll bandages, dig for victory, arrange care for the children of munitions workers, and raise money in support of the war effort. For the School Colours is also notable for...
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.
An epilogue by Thomas Moore
sounds flippantly critical of Bluestockings (not the historical group of this name, but in the more general sense of intellectual women). A speaker appears wondering much what little knavish sprite...
Textual Features
Brigid Brophy
There is a strong flavour of Kafka
about this comic parable both of a family and of a state. The royal family of Evarchia (somewhere in contemporary Middle or Eastern Europe) has an authoritarian father...
JB
makes a pretence that the main story, the on-again off-again love of Bosvil and Galesia, is related by Galesia, in the garden at St Germain in about 1688, to someone called Lucasia (a name...
