Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among the Lions

What a life, what a personality. Makes one think about the importance of privilege/connections/money/hustling/branding to a writer's life and how the societal worship of eccentricities can sometimes overshadow an artist's works. Especially with the Woolf connections and references peppered throughout the book.

Glendinning is thorough in her scholarship and organisation, with just enough pithy sideways authorial interjection to temper and balance out Sitwell's overwhelming individuality. Published in 1981, the book referenced a few times the letters between Sitwell and Tchelitchew to be released by Yale in 2000. I wonder if there's any new edition with perhaps an afterword about how they would colour Glendinning's analyses of their show more smothering codependent relationship.

Aside: it's always nice when one's faves show up in someone else's biographies, it really humanises (de-lionises) all the well-known names and also populates the setting of the past really well. show less

Het leven en het werk van de Engelse excentrieke grande dame die samen met haar twee broers het 'deleterious trio' van de Engelse literatuur vormde in de 1ste helft van de 20ste eeuw. Heel veel faits divers maar weinig analyse van haar werk.