Amy Levy

Amy Levy has risen to prominence in recent years as one of the most innovative and perplexing writers of her generation. Embraced by feminist scholars for her radical experimentation with queer poetic voice and her witty journalistic pieces on female independence, she remains controversial for her representations of London Jewry that draw unmistakably on contemporary antisemitic discourse. Amy Levy: Critical Essays brings together scholars working in the fields of Victorian cultural history, women’s poetry and fiction, and the history of Anglo-Jewry. The essays trace the social, intellectual, and political contexts of Levy’s writing and its contemporary reception. Working from close analyses of Levy’s texts, the collection aims to rethink her engagement with Jewish identity, to consider her literary and political identifications, to assess her representations of modern consumer society and popular culture, and to place her life and work within late-Victorian cultural debate. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students offering both a comprehensive literature review of scholarship-to-date and a range of new critical perspectives. Contributors: Susan David Bernstein,University of Wisconsin-Madison Gail Cunningham,Kingston University Elizabeth F. Evans,Pennslyvania State University–DuBois Emma Francis,Warwick University Alex Goody,Oxford Brookes University T. D. Olverson,University of Newcastle upon Tyne Lyssa Randolph,University of Wales, Newport Meri-Jane Rochelson,Florida International University

Described by Oscar Wilde as a girl of genius, like him Amy Levy set out to challenge the status quo and ended up by destroying her life. A trailblazer from the outset, she was the first Jewish woman to study at Newnham College Cambridge, a seasoned traveller, and a ground-breaking writer. But although her spirit was strong, her constitution was weak. Haunted throughout her life by depression, the difficulties that she faced as a free-thinking Jewish woman in Victorian society were compounded by problems that she brought upon herself. In the end she was unable to reconcile what Wilde termed the cravings of her heart with the reality of her life. Unable to face the future, she brought her unhappiness to an end with an extraordinary self-inflicted death.

Miss Meredith, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

After a century of critical neglect, poet and writer Amy Levy is gaining recognition as a literary figure of stature. This definitive biography accompanied by her letters, along with the recent publication of her selected writings, provides a critical appreciation of Levy's importance in her own time and in ours. As an educated Jewish woman with homoerotic desires, Levy felt the strain of combating the structures of British society in the 1880s, the decade in which she built her career and moved in London's literary and bohemian circles. Unwilling to cut herself off from her Jewish background, she had the additional burden of attempting to bridge the gap between communities. In Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters Linda Hunt Beckman examines Levy's writings and other cultural documents for insight into her emotional and intellectual life. This groundbreaking study introduces us to a woman well deserving of a place in literary and cultural history.

Since the late twentieth century, there has been a strategic campaign to recover the impact of Victorian women writers in the field of English literature. However, with the increased understanding of the importance of interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century, there is a need to extend this campaign beyond literary studies in order to recognise the role of women writers across the nineteenth century, a time that was intrinsically interdisciplinary in approach to scholarly writing and public intellectual engagement.