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Miss Meredith
Miss Meredith (1889) is a novel by Amy Levy. Published the year of her tragic death, Miss Meredith is the final novel of a pioneering writer and feminist whose poetry and prose explores the concept of the New Woman while illuminating the realities of Jewish life in nineteenth century London. “A hard fight with fortune had been my mother's from the day when, a girl of eighteen, she had left a comfortable home to marry my father for love. Poverty and sickness―those two redoubtable dragons―had stood ever in the path. Now, even the love which had been by her side for so many years, and helped to comfort them, had vanished into the unknown.” Elsie Meredith is keenly aware of her mother’s fate in life, and although she wants to be there for her in her time of greatest need, she fears more than anything the prospect of following in her footsteps. “[N]either literary nor artistic, neither picturesque like Jenny nor clever like Rosalind,” Elsie is a textbook middle child, destined to go through life on her own terms, yet unequipped with the drive or willingness to conform possessed by her sisters. On a whim, she decides to embark for Italy to work as a governess for the Marchesa Brogi. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition Amy Levy’s Miss Meredith is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.
73 pages, Paperback
First published September 27, 2015
About the author
Amy Levy
101 books40 followersLevy was born in Clapham, London, the second daughter of Lewis Levy and Isobel Levin. Her Jewish family was mildly observant, but as an adult Levy no longer practised Judaism; she continued to identify with the Jews as a people.
She was educated at Brighton High School, Brighton, and studied at Newnham College, Cambridge; she was the first Jewish student at Newnham, when she arrived in 1879, but left after four terms.
Her circle of friends included Clementina Black, Dollie Radford, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx), and Olive Schreiner. Levy wrote stories, essays, and poems for periodicals, some popular and others literary. Her writing career began early; her poem "Ida Grey" appearing in the journal the Pelican when she was only fourteen. The stories "Cohen of Trinity" and "Wise in Their Generation," both published in Oscar Wilde's magazine "Women's World," are among her best. Her second novel Reuben Sachs (1888) was concerned with Jewish identity and mores in the England of her time (and was consequently controversial); Her first novel Romance of a Shop (1888) depicts four sisters who experience the pleasures and hardships of running a business in London during the 1880s. Other writings as well, including the daring Ballad of Religion and Marriage, reveal feminist concerns. Xantippe and Other Verses (1881) includes a poem in the voice of Socrates's wife; the volume A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884) has dramatic monologues too, as well as lyric poems. In 1886, Levy began writing a series of essays on Jewish culture and literature for the Jewish Chronicle, including The Ghetto at Florence, The Jew in Fiction, Jewish Humour and Jewish Children. Her final book of poems, A London Plane-Tree (1889), contains lyrics that are among the first to show the influence of French symbolism.
Traveling in Europe, she met Vernon Lee in Florence in 1886, and it has been said that she fell in love with her. Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), the fiction writer and literary theorist, was six years older, and inspired the poem To Vernon Lee.
Despite many friends and an active literary life, Levy had suffered from episodes of major depression from an early age which, together with her growing deafness, led her to commit suicide on September 10, 1889, at the age of twenty-seven, by inhaling carbon monoxide. Oscar Wilde wrote an obituary for her in Women's World in which he praised her gifts.
-Wikipedia
She was educated at Brighton High School, Brighton, and studied at Newnham College, Cambridge; she was the first Jewish student at Newnham, when she arrived in 1879, but left after four terms.
Her circle of friends included Clementina Black, Dollie Radford, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx), and Olive Schreiner. Levy wrote stories, essays, and poems for periodicals, some popular and others literary. Her writing career began early; her poem "Ida Grey" appearing in the journal the Pelican when she was only fourteen. The stories "Cohen of Trinity" and "Wise in Their Generation," both published in Oscar Wilde's magazine "Women's World," are among her best. Her second novel Reuben Sachs (1888) was concerned with Jewish identity and mores in the England of her time (and was consequently controversial); Her first novel Romance of a Shop (1888) depicts four sisters who experience the pleasures and hardships of running a business in London during the 1880s. Other writings as well, including the daring Ballad of Religion and Marriage, reveal feminist concerns. Xantippe and Other Verses (1881) includes a poem in the voice of Socrates's wife; the volume A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884) has dramatic monologues too, as well as lyric poems. In 1886, Levy began writing a series of essays on Jewish culture and literature for the Jewish Chronicle, including The Ghetto at Florence, The Jew in Fiction, Jewish Humour and Jewish Children. Her final book of poems, A London Plane-Tree (1889), contains lyrics that are among the first to show the influence of French symbolism.
Traveling in Europe, she met Vernon Lee in Florence in 1886, and it has been said that she fell in love with her. Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), the fiction writer and literary theorist, was six years older, and inspired the poem To Vernon Lee.
Despite many friends and an active literary life, Levy had suffered from episodes of major depression from an early age which, together with her growing deafness, led her to commit suicide on September 10, 1889, at the age of twenty-seven, by inhaling carbon monoxide. Oscar Wilde wrote an obituary for her in Women's World in which he praised her gifts.
-Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 5, 2022
Queer, Jewish author Amy Levy’s final novel, this was published not long before her death by suicide in 1889. It’s a strange, awkward piece, particularly when I compare it to one of her earlier works Reuben Sachs an intricate, intriguing examination of Jewish metropolitan society. Miss Meredith is a compressed, simply and directly told romance, clearly aimed at general readers. It’s narrated by Elsie Meredith the middle child of an impoverished but genteel London family, she’s neither artistic like her sister Jenny or a bluestocking like her older sister Rosalind. Uncertain about her future, Elsie takes up an offer of a job in Italy tutoring the 18-year-old daughter of a well-to-do family based in Pisa. Levy consciously references the novels of Charlotte Bronte here, although her central character makes it clear she doesn’t consider Mr Rochester as her ideal hero in any setting. Elsie’s time with her Italian employers is fraught with cultural misunderstandings, the rigidity and complexity of Italian upper-class society confuses and repels her but then she falls in love and everything changes. The romance at the heart of Levy’s story is very much the stuff of fantasy, a faster-than-whirlwind romance, quickly thwarted but just as quickly resolved. Levy’s presumably drawing on her own time in Italy where she also fell in love at first sight but for her it was with a woman, the well-known writer Vernon Lee aka Violet Paget - although Levy’s feelings weren’t reciprocated.
I couldn’t work out how to interpret Levy’s narrative, on one level it could be read as a commentary on the absurdity of the Victorian governess-employer romance novel, on another autobiographically as a sort of wish-fulfilment story in which her heroine overcomes obstacles to an “unsuitable” love affair and wins out against society’s expectations and disapproval. Something that seemed an impossibility for Levy herself. It might also be that Levy just wanted to avoid the controversy stirred up by previous more serious work, so decided to try her hand at commercial fiction to make money. But although it seemed puzzling in the context of Levy’s wider body of writing, Miss Meredith is still fluidly written, highly readable, just incredibly slight. For me, the most memorable scenes were the ones featuring Elsie’s observations and impressions of Italy, the local landscapes, the streets and buildings of Pisa, as well as her acute awareness of the poverty existing side by side with the gloomily-opulent palazzos inhabited by her employer’s class. But I still found it difficult to understand how Elsie as a creation fitted with Levy the writer so admired by Oscar Wilde or Levy the ‘new woman’ part of literary and political circles that included Olive Schreiner and Eleanor Marx or Levy the sapphic poet passionately proclaiming her love for women.
I couldn’t work out how to interpret Levy’s narrative, on one level it could be read as a commentary on the absurdity of the Victorian governess-employer romance novel, on another autobiographically as a sort of wish-fulfilment story in which her heroine overcomes obstacles to an “unsuitable” love affair and wins out against society’s expectations and disapproval. Something that seemed an impossibility for Levy herself. It might also be that Levy just wanted to avoid the controversy stirred up by previous more serious work, so decided to try her hand at commercial fiction to make money. But although it seemed puzzling in the context of Levy’s wider body of writing, Miss Meredith is still fluidly written, highly readable, just incredibly slight. For me, the most memorable scenes were the ones featuring Elsie’s observations and impressions of Italy, the local landscapes, the streets and buildings of Pisa, as well as her acute awareness of the poverty existing side by side with the gloomily-opulent palazzos inhabited by her employer’s class. But I still found it difficult to understand how Elsie as a creation fitted with Levy the writer so admired by Oscar Wilde or Levy the ‘new woman’ part of literary and political circles that included Olive Schreiner and Eleanor Marx or Levy the sapphic poet passionately proclaiming her love for women.
October 22, 2023
Enjoyable but perhaps a little underdeveloped. I didn't love it as much as The Romance of a Shop.
June 5, 2018
L'instalove era una patologia diffusa anche nell'Ottocento.
June 8, 2021
Promising premise and characters who could be developed, but this novella lacks detail and fails to veer of the formulaic path of the governess trope.
November 28, 2023
Miss Meredith is a fairly easy read and feels kind of like a novella. If you don't have time for an Austen or a Gaskell but want to read a period piece, Miss Meredith won't take you long to read. The plot isn't complex, there's romance, and the ending is a little roller-coaster.
August 2, 2024
Amy Levy was a novelist of radical views, and it was surprising to read this novella from her, something of a cross between Charlotte Bronte and Ann Radcliffe. Certainly it begins deprecatingly enough by a young woman who knows she is neither as gifted nor as pretty as her two sisters. After a bad sea crossing to Europe, she finally makes her way to a gothic pile. The noble Italian family which has engaged her as governess to a young girl is off-hand and barely short of rude. Change to a few months later, when the estranged younger son returns from America. Love at first sight. One dance, one week later, proposal to governess and her delighted acceptance. One hour later, the young lady breaks off the engagement. Another hour and the engagement is on again. Rejoicing all round.
Neither plot, style nor character show any growth, display any genuine change of heart or mood, so to me it is a mystery that Levy, with her feminist outlook should author such a sentimental story. There are a few interesting touches: the Italian family, despite its aristocratic nature is unknown to the little governess’s family. They have been recommended by a friend of a friend, who knows only that they live in Pisa. Another is the loneliness of Elsie in the first months. Everyone gabbles fast and furiously in Italian, and there is no English-speaking family with whom she can talk freely and make friends.
Under such circumstances, what can a girl do, but fall in love with the first man who comes her way, especially if he is young, handsome, spoke English, danced beautifully and was Italian?
Neither plot, style nor character show any growth, display any genuine change of heart or mood, so to me it is a mystery that Levy, with her feminist outlook should author such a sentimental story. There are a few interesting touches: the Italian family, despite its aristocratic nature is unknown to the little governess’s family. They have been recommended by a friend of a friend, who knows only that they live in Pisa. Another is the loneliness of Elsie in the first months. Everyone gabbles fast and furiously in Italian, and there is no English-speaking family with whom she can talk freely and make friends.
Under such circumstances, what can a girl do, but fall in love with the first man who comes her way, especially if he is young, handsome, spoke English, danced beautifully and was Italian?
April 14, 2021
The length works against it to some extent (I found the conflict resolved pretty quickly, plus while Andrea and Elsie are sweet they do get engaged after a single week of knowing each other) but generally I really liked it. A small detail I appreciated is the extent to which the Meredith siblings being working women in various spheres is just taken for granted - maybe it's not realistic but I like to think Elsie won't retire completely after her marriage.
March 18, 2021
Listened to the Librivox audiobook (a new release). Good readers, a nice gentle story.
Disclaimer: I narrated Chap 2, my comment about the readers refers to the others :)
Disclaimer: I narrated Chap 2, my comment about the readers refers to the others :)
September 22, 2013
Prima di aver letto che la Jo March aveva intenzione di pubblicare The Romance of a Shop, non avevo mai sentito nominare Amy Levy. La mia curiosità si è subito scatenata, in modo forse un po' morboso perché partita dall'aver scoperto che la Levy si era suicidata a soli ventisette anni: mi sono così immaginata un'autrice di cose amare e disperate (tipo Zola e Wharton, in modi diversi, due dei miei autori preferiti). Non ho trovato niente aggratisse e ho lasciato perdere. Poi sono tornata all'attacco e, da brava taccagna quale sono, ho scovato questo racconto.
L'ho trovato molto carino anche se sono rimasta delusa nelle mie aspettative di storie di povertà, amarezza, occasioni perdute etc. Al contrario è abbastanza zuccheroso e un po' ingenuo, nonché assai telefonato, perché l'andazzo con storia d'amore si intravede subito. Il problema non è quello, quanto il fatto che sono sempre parecchio dubbiosa di queste persone che si innamorato perdutamente dopo essersi guardate negli occhi una volta.
Però rimane l'intenzione di leggere anche il resto della - poca - prosa di questa scrittrice.
L'ho trovato molto carino anche se sono rimasta delusa nelle mie aspettative di storie di povertà, amarezza, occasioni perdute etc. Al contrario è abbastanza zuccheroso e un po' ingenuo, nonché assai telefonato, perché l'andazzo con storia d'amore si intravede subito. Il problema non è quello, quanto il fatto che sono sempre parecchio dubbiosa di queste persone che si innamorato perdutamente dopo essersi guardate negli occhi una volta.
Però rimane l'intenzione di leggere anche il resto della - poca - prosa di questa scrittrice.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews