Amy Levy (1861–1889)
Author of Reuben Sachs
Works by Amy Levy
Home 1 copy
Associated Works
Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire (1997) — Contributor — 96 copies, 1 review
Out of My Borrowed Books: Poems by Augusta Webster, Mathilde Blind and Amy Levy (2006) — Contributor — 6 copies
Poems in the waiting room : Issue 71 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Levy, Amy
- Birthdate
- 1861-11-10
- Date of death
- 1889-09-10
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Cambridge (Newnham College)
Brighton and Hove High School - Occupations
- poet
essayist
novelist - Relationships
- Lee, Vernon (love)
- Short biography
- Amy Levy was born to a large Anglo-Jewish family. Her admirer and editor Oscar Wilde said that as a young adult, she "ceased to hold the orthodox doctrines of her nation, retaining, however, a strong race feeling." She began writing at a young age. At 13, she wrote a criticism of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh; and at 14, her first poem "Ida Grey: A Story of Woman's Sacrifice," was published in the journal Pelican. She was a boarder at Brighton High School for Girls, a school founded by women’s rights advocates. In 1879, Amy Levy became the second Jewish woman to attend Cambridge and the first at Newnham College. After leaving Cambridge, she traveled back and forth between Europe and London. Her circle of literary friends included Clementina Black, Eleanor Marx, and Olive Schreiner. Amy Levy wrote poems, novels, stories, and essays for periodicals; many of her works reveal feminist concerns. In 1886, Amy 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. Spending the winter of 1886 in Florence, Amy met and fell in love with Violet Paget, a writer who used the pseudonym Vernon Lee. Amy Levy's second novel Reuben Sachs (1888) was heavily criticized by the Jewish press. She had suffered from episodes of clinical depression from an early age and was growing deaf. These factors may have led to her suicide at the age of 27.
- Cause of death
- suicide
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Clapham, London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England, UK
Florence, Italy - Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
A disappointment. I went into The Romance of a Shop with great hopes for this early example of the "New Woman" novel—the four middle-class Lorimer sisters, facing poverty following their father's death, decide to earn their living and open a photography studio in 1880s London—but ultimately felt that description is a bit of a bait-and-switch.
We see almost nothing of the Lorimers at work. We are told that trade is slow at first; then we are told that they're successful; what they do to show more merit or nurture that remains opaque. I'm not saying that I wanted to read their business plan or anything, but getting to see the Lorimers deal with customers, develop their skills, set some new photographic fashion—any of that would have been more appealing than the shoddy Pride and Prejudice-meets-Little Women pastiche melodrama that this novel lapses into.(Only here the Lydia Bennet analogue dies of tuberculosis because of her Sin, while the Jo March equivalent meets her future husband while photographing the corpse of his adulterous first wife. Romance indeed.) Self-realisation is ultimately far less a concern here than is the tidy resolution of various stock matrimonial plots.
There is some promise here—flashes of humour; a knack for dryly pointed character descriptions; some knowing play with tropes and references—and I do wonder what Amy Levy would have been capable of had she lived longer. But as is, I feel like this is a book of historical rather than real literary interest. show less
We see almost nothing of the Lorimers at work. We are told that trade is slow at first; then we are told that they're successful; what they do to show more merit or nurture that remains opaque. I'm not saying that I wanted to read their business plan or anything, but getting to see the Lorimers deal with customers, develop their skills, set some new photographic fashion—any of that would have been more appealing than the shoddy Pride and Prejudice-meets-Little Women pastiche melodrama that this novel lapses into.
There is some promise here—flashes of humour; a knack for dryly pointed character descriptions; some knowing play with tropes and references—and I do wonder what Amy Levy would have been capable of had she lived longer. But as is, I feel like this is a book of historical rather than real literary interest. show less
Oscar Wilde wrote of this novel, "Its directness, its uncompromising truths, its depth of feeling, and above all, its absence of any single superfluous word, make Reuben Sachs, in some sort, a classic." Reuben Sachs, the story of an extended Anglo-Jewish family in London, focuses on the relationship between two cousins, Reuben Sachs and Judith Quixano, and the tensions between their Jewish identities and English society. The novel's complex and sometimes satirical portrait of Anglo-Jewish show more life, which was in part a reaction to George Eliot's romanticized view of Victorian Jews in Daniel Deronda, caused controversy on its first publication. show less
Amy Levy sadly only lived long enough to write two novels before her depression overcame her and she committed suicide. This, the first and less serious of her efforts, never quite emerges from the shadow of Jane Austen, but is still a worthwhile read for its treatment of women in the late nineteenth century.
After the passing of their father, four girls decide to unite their efforts and open a photographic studio in London rather than wait for fate and society to take them. They meet many show more obstacles before they attain their goal, first among which is the prurience of the society they are leaving.
However, as the chapters roll on by, this becomes less a novel about women at work, and more traditionally about women seeking marriage; anyone who has read more than one novel by Jane Austen will see the twists and turns coming a mile off. This is a shame, as a book firmly committed to independent women running a photographer's studio would have been even more fascinating than what we have here. That said, there is only so much liberal thinking one can expect in a novel of its time, and without books such as this we might not have had the great emancipation movements that followed. show less
After the passing of their father, four girls decide to unite their efforts and open a photographic studio in London rather than wait for fate and society to take them. They meet many show more obstacles before they attain their goal, first among which is the prurience of the society they are leaving.
However, as the chapters roll on by, this becomes less a novel about women at work, and more traditionally about women seeking marriage; anyone who has read more than one novel by Jane Austen will see the twists and turns coming a mile off. This is a shame, as a book firmly committed to independent women running a photographer's studio would have been even more fascinating than what we have here. That said, there is only so much liberal thinking one can expect in a novel of its time, and without books such as this we might not have had the great emancipation movements that followed. show less
This is a beautifully crafted little novel. The language is faultless, pared down to only that which is needed, yet at the same time painting an unforgetable picture of Anglo-Jewish life at the end of the 19th century. The story is that of Reuben Sachs abnd his cousin Judith Quixano. Much is expected of young Reuben, and Judith is a poor relation, and a romance between them would be unthinkable in the gossipy, snobbish community they live in. In terms of plot it might be fair to say that not show more much happens until then end of the novel, the families visit one another, go shopping, and there is a ball. Yet a world is created in such a way as the people that live in it step right off the page.
This novel was written (some say) in answer to the highly romanticized portrait of Jewish life created by George Elliot in Daniel Deronda, and therefore caused some criticism at the time. Amy Levy was still quite a young woman when she wrote this novel, who knows what she may have achieved had she not committed suicide a few years later aged only 27. show less
This novel was written (some say) in answer to the highly romanticized portrait of Jewish life created by George Elliot in Daniel Deronda, and therefore caused some criticism at the time. Amy Levy was still quite a young woman when she wrote this novel, who knows what she may have achieved had she not committed suicide a few years later aged only 27. show less
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