Amy Levy

Amy Levy (10 November 1861 - 10 September 1889) was an English poet and novelist.

Amy Levy (1861-1889) in 1889. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Youth and education

Levy was born in Clapham, London, the 2nd daughter of Isabelle (Levin) and Lewis Levy. Her parents were of the Jewish faith. She early showed decided talent, especially for poetry, pieces afterwards thought worthy of preservation having been written in her 13th year.

She was educated at Brighton, and afterwards at Newnham College, Cambridge.

Career

In 1881 a small pamphlet of her verse, Xantippe, and other verse, was printed at Cambridge. Most of the contents were subsequently incorporated with her 2nd publication, A Minor Poet, and other verse, 1884.

Levy responded more readily to painful than to pleasurable emotions, and this incapacity for pleasure was a more serious trouble than her sensitiveness to pain: it deprived her of the encouragement she might otherwise have received. She was indeed frequently happy and animated, but her cheerfulness was but a passing mood that merely gilded her habitual melancholy, without diminishing it by a particle, while sadness grew upon her steadily, in spite of flattering success and the sympathy of affectionate friends.

After a fortunate essay with a minor work of fiction, The Romance of a Shop, success attended her remarkable novel, Reuben Sachs, 1889. It brought upon the authoress much unpleasant criticism, which, however, was far from affecting her spirits to the extent alleged.

She was the anonymous translator of Pérés's clever brochure, Comme quoi Napoléon n'a jamais existé.

In the summer of 1889 she published a pretty and for once cheerful story, Miss Meredith, but within a week after correcting her 3rd volume of poems for the press, she died by her own hand in her parents' house, 7 Endsleigh Gardens, London. No cause can or need be assigned for this lamentable event except constitutional melancholy, intensified by painful losses in her own family, increasing deafness, and probably the apprehension of insanity, combined with a total inability to derive pleasure or consolation from the extraneous circumstances which would have brightened the lives of most others.

Writing

Critical introduction

by Richard Garnett

Levy's writings offer few traces of the usual immaturity of precocious talent; they are carefully constructed and highly finished, and the sudden advance made in Reuben Sachs indicates a great reserve of undeveloped power. This is a most powerful work, alike in the condensed tragedy of the main action, the striking portraiture of the principal characters, and the keen satire of the less refined aspects of Jewish society.

"Xantippe" is in many respects her most powerful production, exhibiting a passionate rhetoric and a keen, piercing dialectic, exceedingly remarkable in so young a writer. It is a defence of Socrates's maligned wife, from the woman's point of view, full of tragic pathos, and only short of complete success from its frequent reproduction of the manner of both the Brownings.

The same may be said of "A Minor Poet," a poem now more interesting than when it was written, from its evident foreshadowing of the melancholy fate of the author herself. The most important pieces in the volume are in blank verse, too colloquial to be finely modulated, but always terse and nervous.

A London Plane Tree, and other verse, 1889, is, on the other hand, chiefly lyrical. Most of the pieces are individually beautiful; as a collection they weary with their monotony of sadness.

Recognition

Oscar Wilde wrote an obituary for her in Women's World in which he praised her gifts.

Publications

Poetry

• Xantippe, and other verse. Cambridge, UK: E. Johnson, 1881.
• A Minor Poet, and other verse (includes Xantippe and other verse). London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1884, 1891; New York: Stokes, 1891.
• A London Plane-Tree, and other verse. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889; New York: Stokes, 1890.

Novels

• The Romance of a Shop. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1888; Boston: Cupples & Hurd, 1889; Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press 2006.
• Reuben Sachs: A sketch. London & New York: Macmillan, 1888; Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2006.
• Miss Meredith. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1889; Montreal: J. Lovell, 1889.

Collected editions

• Complete Novels and Selected Writings, 1861-1889 (edited by Melvyn New). Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1993.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Epitaph- Poem By Amy Levy

• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

References

• Linda Hunt Beckman, "Amy Levy: Her life and letters," Athens: Ohio, 2000;
• Susan Bernstein, ed., Reuben Sachs [with introduction and other readings by Levy and others], Broadview, 2006.
• Judith Flanders. Inside the Victorian Home: A portrait of domestic life in Victorian England. New York: Norton 2006
•  Garnett, Richard (1893) "Levy, Amy" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 33 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 162  . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 19, 2017.
• Iveta Jusova, The New Woman and the Empire. Ohio State University Press, 2005.

External links

Poems

• 5 poems by Levy: "Philosophy," "London in July," "In September," "A June-Tide Echo," "A March Day in London"
• Levy in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "A London Plane-Tree," "Between the Showers," "In the Mile End Road," "To Vernon Lee"
• Levy, Amy (1861-1889) (5 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Levy in A Book of Women's Verse: "A London Plane-Tree," "In September," "In the Nower," "Cambridge in the Long," "New Love, New Life," "London Poets"
• Amy Levy poems on Cordula's Web
• Poems by Amy Levy at World Poetry Movement
• Amy Levy at PoemHunter (74 poems)
• Amy Levy at Poetry Nook (83 poems)
• Philosophy: Poem of the Week at The Guardian

Audio / video

• Amy Levy poems at YouTube
• MP3 recording of Levy's novel Reuben Sachs: A sketch from LibriVox
• A London Plane-tree, and other verse at LibriVox

Books

• Amy Levy at Amazon.com

About

• Levy, Amy in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• Amy Levy at the Jewish Women's Archive
• Amy Levy (1861-99) at the Victorian Web
• Critical analysis of Levys's work
• 'All The World is Blind': Unveiling same-sex desire in the poetry of Amy Levy

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Levy, Amy