Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)
Author of English Eccentrics
About the Author
The first child of Sir George Sitwell and Lady Ida Sitwell, Edith Sitwell became famous both as poet and bohemian. Reacting against what she called the "dim bucolics" of the Georgians, she and her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell constituted a kind of aristocratic bohemian vanguard after World War show more I. Sergei Diaghilev's (see Vol. 3) Russian Ballet joined T. S. Eliot and, improbably, Alexander Pope among the early influences on her work. A skilled publicist as well as poet, Sitwell exploited her upper-class nonconformity in numerous public controversies. Her collaboration with William Walton to produce musical settings of the Facade poems (1923) created an uproar when the work was performed. Sitwell also put her talents to work for young writers in whom she believed, chief among them Dylan Thomas, whose reputation she helped launch. Despite later public honors---Elizabeth II created her a Dame Grand Cross of the British Empire, and Oxford and Cambridge bestowed honorary degrees---she remained proudly eccentric throughout her celebrated career. Sitwell's early poetry displayed a pyrotechnic surface of dazzling images and leaps. She saw Eliot's Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) as heralding "a new era in poetry," which would lead to poets seeing the world with new eyes. Breakthroughs in perception often became the themes as well as goals of her poetry. Interested particularly in French symbolist theories of sound, she developed an intricate tonal play of verbal patterns in her verse. Her work displayed an increasingly religious orientation, and during World War II, she engaged such public themes as politics more overtly in works like Three Poems for an Atomic Age. Besides her own verse, she wrote several books of prose and edited numerous anthologies of poetry. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Edith Sitwell, 1918, by Roger Fry
Series
Works by Edith Sitwell
The sleeping beauty 6 copies
Troy Park 6 copies
Five variations on a theme 3 copies
Look! The sun 3 copies
Poor men's music 3 copies
Epithalamium 3 copies
In spring 2 copies
The mother and other poems 2 copies
Wheels : an anthology of verse 2 copies
Five poems 2 copies
WHEELS, 1919: FOURTH CYCLE 1 copy
Wheels, fifth cycle. 1 copy
惑星の蔓―イーディス・シットウェル詩集 1 copy
イーディス・シットウェル詩集 1 copy
Edith Sitwell's Anthology — Composer — 1 copy
Contact collection of contemporary writers — Contributor — 1 copy
(Poems) 1 copy
The Russian ballet gift book 1 copy
凍る〔モー〕―イーディス・シットウェル詩集 1 copy
Associated Works
New World Writing: Third Mentor Selection - Poetry, Fiction, Drama, Criticism (1953) — Contributor — 6 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Sitwell, Edith
- Legal name
- Sitwell, Dame Edith Louisa
- Other names
- シトウェル, イーディス
- Birthdate
- 1887-09-07
- Date of death
- 1964-12-09
- Burial location
- St. Mary's Churchyard, Weedon Lois, Northamptonshire, England, UK
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, UK
- Place of death
- London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, UK
London, England, UK
Renishaw Hall, Derbyshire, England, UK - Education
- privately educated
- Occupations
- poet
editor
biographer
literary critic
novelist - Relationships
- Sitwell, Sir George (father)
Sitwell, Sir Osbert (brother)
Sitwell, Sir Sacheverell (brother)
Stein, Gertrude (friend) - Organizations
- American Academy of Arts and Letters (Foreign Honorary, Literature, 1949)
- Awards and honors
- Royal Society of Literature Companion of Literature (1963)
Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire (1954)
Benson Medal - Short biography
- Edith Sitwell, the author of The English Eccentrics (1933), was herself the daughter of an eccentric, Sir George Sitwell, and his wife Lady Ida Emily Augusta Denison. In her autobiography, Edith said that her parents had always been strangers to her. She had two younger brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, both of whom grew up to be well-known literary figures and long-term collaborators. In 1912, at age 25, Edith moved to London, where she lived in a small, shabby flat in Bayswater with Helen Rootham, her former governess. Edith published her first poem, The Drowned Suns, in the Daily Mirror in 1913. Between 1916 and 1921 she edited Wheels, an annual poetic anthology compiled with her brothers. She also wrote nonfiction, including a biography, Victoria of England (1936). After Rootham become an invalid, the two went to live with her younger sister in Paris; Rootham died in 1938. Edith's only novel, I Live under a Black Sun (1937), was based on the life of Jonathan Swift. During World War II, Edith Sitwell returned from France and retired to the family's country house, Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, with her brother Osbert and his lover, David Horner. She wrote by the light of oil lamps when the electricity went out and knitted clothes for their friends serving in the armed forces. The poems she wrote during the war, which included Street Songs (1942), The Song of the Cold (1945) and The Shadow of Cain (1947), were greatly praised. Still Falls the Rain, about the London blitz, remains perhaps her best-known poem. It was set to music by Benjamin Britten. In 1948 Sitwell toured the USA with her brothers, reciting her poetry and giving a reading of Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene. She made recordings of her poems, including two recordings of Façade (1922). She never married. Edith Sitwell was named a Dame Commander (DBE) in 1954. The following year, she converted to the Roman Catholic faith. She produced two successful books about Queen Elizabeth I of England, Fanfare for Elizabeth (1946) and The Queens and the Hive (1962).
Members
Reviews
Facade by Dame Edith Sitwell
Fun to read aloud, but don't hope for any clarity of meaning while doing so. If you can just enjoy the sound play and not mind the obscurity, you'll get the best there is to be gotten out of these poems. It's obvious Sitwell could have done more than play with sounds and build up vague impressions of meaning, which makes me willing to try other collections of her work to see if she ever moved beyond this sort of thing while retaining her virtuosity.
Favourites: "Three Poor Witches" and "The Youth with the Red-Gold Hair".
Going through my Bloomsbury period. A true eccentric writing about eccentrics as only the British have them.
'O bitter love, O death' is full of sadness. Sad to say there are many who are 'drier than a crone'. Librarians have once more damaged my copy with their cardboard pockets, the ticket in the pocket, torn off what looks like a Magistrat Bad Oeynhausen railway luggage label, their issue label and other stamps which nevertheless give some indication of the 'Rezeption' of the poems. The book formed part of collection of the Army Study Centre Library, Bach Strasse, Bad Oeynhausen and was issued 6 times between April 1947 and November 1948. The ink stamping of The Sunday Times National Book Fund for H.M.Forces on the endpapers suggests that this was the source of funding to buy it for the library. What did the lenders think of the poems or was it just one who renewed it 5 times? originally a pa, Bad Oeynhausen became a focal point the British Zone of occupation just after World War II - wikipedia for an interesting article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Oeynhausen… (more)
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Statistics
- Works
- 89
- Also by
- 15
- Members
- 1,993
- Popularity
- #12,911
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 17
- ISBNs
- 120
- Languages
- 9
- Favorited
- 3
