A Minor Poet And Other Verse

by Amy Levy

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Poetry

58 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 1889

About the author

Levy 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

Reviews

[Katie Lumsden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this poetry collection.

[Mark Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is the weird thing about poetry: in the hands of a mediocre talent, it can be dreadful. In the hands of a gifted woman it can be gorgeous and haunting. And that is even if the two different poets are writing in the same style.
Amy Levy was a woman in and out of her time. Her poetry conforms stylistically to the verbose and melodramatic style of its time (the late 1800s). Ah, but the heat and passion in this work is scorching.
Amy was one of the very first modern lesbian poets who were unafraid to speak out, and for that crime she has been sentenced to obscurity by society. Now we live in a slightly more enlightened time, and one hopes the world will finally read these marvelous poems.
You should. You will be elevated and enticed. This poor woman committed suicide at 29 (an occupational hazard for poets and minor rock stars) but she left some wonderful work for us to discover 100 years later:

Of warmth and sun and sweetness
All nature takes a part.
The ice of all the ages
Weighs down upon my heart.

[Caroline Duggan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Xantippe is my favourite of these poems, and Medea is also amazing - written in dramatic verse and so powerful. Levy writes with such economy of expression and the epic poems in particular have wonderful pace and drama.