A London Plane-Tree - And Other Verse: With a Biography by Richard Garnett

By Amy Levy and Richard Garnett

“A London Plane-Tree - And Other Verse” is an 1889 collection of poetry by Amy Levy. Amy Judith Levy (1861–1889) was a British poet, novelist, and essayist. She was notably the first Jewish woman to study at Cambridge university, and she became well-known for her feminist positions as well as relationships with both male and female political and literature figures. Contents include: “A London Plane-Tree”, “Love, Dreams, & Death”, “Moods and Thoughts”, and “Odds and Ends”. Her other works include: “Xantippe and Other Verse” (1881), “The Romance of a Shop” (1888), “Reuben Sachs” (1888), and “Miss Meredith” (1889). As part of our poetry imprint "Ragged Hand" Read & Co. is proudly publishing this brand new collection of classic poetry complete with an introductory biography of the author by Richard Garnett.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ragged Hand
• Release date: Dec 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528791397

Amy Levy

Amy Levy (1861-1889) was a British poet and novelist. Born in Clapham, London to a Jewish family, she was the second oldest of seven children. Levy developed a passion for literature in her youth, writing a critique of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh and publishing her first poem by the age of fourteen. After excelling at Brighton and Hove High School, Levy became the first Jewish student at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied for several years without completing her degree. Around this time, she befriended such feminist intellectuals as Clementina Black, Ellen Wordsworth Darwin, Eleanor Marx, and Olive Schreiner. As a so-called “New Woman” and lesbian, much of Levy’s literary work explores the concerns of nineteenth century feminism. Levy was a romantic partner of Violet Paget, a British storyteller and scholar of Aestheticism who wrote using the pseudonym Vernon Lee. Her first novel, The Romance of a Shop (1888), is powerful story of sisterhood and perseverance in the face of poverty and marginalization. Levy is also known for such poetry collections as A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884) and A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889). At the age of 27, after a lifetime of depression exacerbated by relationship trouble and her increasing deafness, Levy committed suicide at her parents’ home in Endsleigh Gardens.

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AMY LEVY

By Richard Garnett

AMY LEVY (1861–1889), poetess and novelist, second daughter of Mr. Lewis Levy, by his wife Isabelle [Levin], was born at Clapham on 10 Nov. 1861. Her parents were of the Jewish faith.

She was educated at Brighton, and afterwards at Newnham College, Cambridge. She early showed decided talent, especially for poetry, pieces afterwards thought worthy of preservation having been written in her thirteenth year.

In 1881 a small pamphlet of verse from her pen, ‘Xantippe and other poems,’ was printed at Cambridge. Most of the contents were subsequently incorporated with her second publication, A Minor Poet and other Verse, (1884). ‘Xantippe’ is in many respects her most powerful production, exhibiting a passionate rhetoric and a keen, piercing dialectic, exceedingly remarkable in so young a writer. It is a defence of Socrates's maligned wife, from the woman's point of view, full of tragic pathos, and only short of complete success from its frequent reproduction of the manner of both the Brownings. The same may be said of ‘A Minor Poet,’ a poem now more interesting than when it was written, from its evident prefigurement of the melancholy fate of the authoress herself. The most important pieces in the volume are in blank verse, too colloquial to be finely modulated, but always terse and nervous. A London Plane Tree and other Poems, (1889), is, on the other hand, chiefly lyrical. Most of the pieces are individually beautiful; as a collection they weary with their monotony of sadness. The authoress responded more readily to painful than to pleasurable emotions, and this incapacity for pleasure was a more serious trouble than her sensitiveness to pain: it deprived her of the encouragement she might have received from the success which, after a fortunate essay with a minor work of fiction, The Romance of a Shop, attended her remarkable novel, Reuben Sachs, (1889). This is a most powerful work, alike in the condensed tragedy of the main action, the striking portraiture of the principal characters, and the keen satire of the less refined aspects of Jewish society. It brought upon the authoress much unpleasant criticism, which, however, was far from affecting her spirits to the extent alleged.