Amy Levy 1861 – 1889
Poet and author.
10 November 1861 -10 September 1889
A London Plane Tree Amy Levy
Green is the plane-tree in the square,
The other trees are brown;
They droop and pine for country air;
The plane-tree loves the town.
Here from my garrett-pane, I mark
The plane-tree bud and blow,
Shed her recuperative bark,
And spread her shade below.
Among her branches, in and out,
The city breezes play;
The dun fog wraps her round about;
Above, the smoke curls grey.
Others the country take for choice,
And hold the town in scorn;
But she has listened to the voice
On city breezes borne.
A London Plane Tree read by Fiz Marcus:
Mini Biography
Education
Attended Brighton High School for Girls, founded by women’s rights activists, inspired by Edith Creak, headmistress.
1879-91 Studied classical and modern languages and literature at Cambridge University, the second Jewish woman to enrol at Newnham College.
Some Key Achievements and Interests
Broke convention by applying to university.
Wrote poems, short stories and novels of acclaim.
Travelled abroad without the expected chaperones.
Pioneer of poetry inspired by French symbolism.
Issues
Met antisemitism.
Awoke controversy with Reuben Sachs which was mistakenly thought to be an attack on the Anglo-Jewish community but to which she responded.
Was at the receiving end of complaints about women in the British Museum Reading Room, addressing those in her 1887 short story The Recent Telepathic Occurrence at the British Museum and 1889 essay Atlanta.
Suffered from clinical depression much of her life, committing suicide at the age of 27.
Connection to Bloomsbury
Family home in Bloomsbury.
Applied for a ticket to the Reading Room Nov 1882 when turned 21 and here networked, researched and wrote.
Female Networks
Beatrice Webb, Clementina and Constance Black, Dollie Radford, Dorothy Blomfield, Eleanor Marx, Margaret Harkness, Olive Schreiner, Rosemund Marriott Watson, Vernon Lee born Violet Page.
Writing/Publications include:
1881 Xantippe and Other Verses
1884 A Minor Poet and Other Verse
1888 Reuben Sachs
1888 Romance of a Shop
Feb 1888 ‘The Poetry of Christina Rossetti‘ publ in The Woman’s World
1889 A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse
1889 Miss Meredith
Levy celebrates the new experience of riding on an omnibus:
Amy Levy Ballade of an Omnibus
“To see my love suffices me.”
–Ballades in Blue China.
Some men to carriages aspire;
On some the costly hansoms wait;
Some seek a fly, on job or hire;
Some mount the trotting steed, elate.
I envy not the rich and great,
A wandering minstrel, poor and free,
I am contended with my fate —
An omnibus suffices me.
In winter days of rain and mire
I find within a corner strait;
The ‘busmen know me and my lyre
From Brompton to the Bull-and-Gate.
When summer comes, I mount in state
The topmost summit, whence I see
Crœsus look up, compassionate —
An omnibus suffices me.
I mark, untroubled by desire,
Lucullus’ phaeton and its freight.
The scene whereof I cannot tire,
The human tale of love and hate,
The city pageant, early and late
Unfolds itself, rolls by, to be
A pleasure deep and delicate.
An omnibus suffices me.
Princess, your splendour you require,
I, my simplicity; agree
Neither to rate lower nor higher.
An omnibus suffices me.
see also her poem To Vernon Lee: Vernon Lee 1856 – 1935 – Pascal Theatre Company (pascal-theatre.com)
Further reading
see: Women and Madness – Pascal Theatre Company (pascal-theatre.com)
“Amy Levy.” Susan David Bernstein, 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118405376.wbevl187 in Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature. Eds. Dino Felluga, Pamela Gilbert, and Linda Hughes. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.