Amy Levy

Throughout her life she suffered from depression, however, she still continued to travel and write.

In 1886, she met Violet Piaget, an author better known by the pseudonym of Vernon Lee, and fell in love with her. Although Vernon was a lesbian, the feelings were not mutual and she considered Levy only a good friend.

She committed suicide on September 10, 1889 at her parents’ home in Bloomsbury in London by inhaling carbon monoxide because of increasing depression and her awareness of her growing deafness.

She was born on November 10, 1861 in Clapham, an affluent district of London, to Lewis Levy, a successful stockbroker and his wife Isabel Levy. She was the second of their seven children.

She was born in a middle class Anglo-Jewish family rooted in England and drawn towards literature. Her family participated in home theater productions where her siblings wrote literary works and she transformed it into poetry and plays.

Her writing career began at the age of 14 when her poem ‘Ida Grey’ was published in the journal ‘Pelican’.

She was sent to the Brighton and Hove High School for early education. She was highly influenced by her 21 year old headmistress, Edith Creak, a goal oriented independent woman, the type of a New Woman.

She struck lifelong friendships with Clementina Black, Dollie Radford, Eleanor Marx and Olive Schreiner.

In 1886, she traveled to Florence, Italy and published a series of articles in ‘The Jewish Chronicle’, on Jewish life in Florence.

While in Florence, she met Violet Paget, a lesbian fiction writer. Violet became the inspiration behind two of her sonnets, ‘To Vernon Lee’ and ‘New Love, New Life’.

She published many essays and poems between 1886 and 1888 including ‘Women and Club Life’, ‘The Poetry of Christina Rossetti’, ‘At Prato’ and ‘The Recent Telepathic Occurrence at the British Museum’.

Her first novel, ‘Romance of a Shop’, a story about four sisters who defy convention and open a photography shop, was published in 1888.The book was well reviewed by critics and was also praised by Oscar Wilde.

Her second novel, ‘Reuben Sachs’, also published in 1888 was erroneously attacked by the Jewish Press as being anti-Semitic. It was mistakenly perceived by the Jewish press as an attack on Jewish life.

Her 1888 novel, ‘Reuben Sachs’, depicts the tale of a tragic romance between the politically ambitious title character and his lover Judith, a young Jewess from a lower-class family. To this day, it remains her most successful novel.

The stories ‘Cohen of Trinity’ and ‘Wise in Her Generation’, both published in Oscar Wilde's magazine ‘Women's World’, are among her notable works.

In 1993, her literary work ‘The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy’ was published posthumously and sparked a new interest in her as a writer.