Amy Levy
Lindsay Katzir, Antioch University New England
Amy Judith Levy was born on November 10, 1861 to Isobel Levin and Lewis Levy, the second of their seven children. Lewis was a merchant turned stockbroker, and the family were middle-class, assimilated Jews whose roots in England went back generations. Though not particularly observant, they provided Amy with a basic Jewish education, likely including Hebrew lessons, and occasionally attended the West London Synagogue of British Jews, a reform congregation in Upper Berkeley Street. Levy, more interested in writing than religion, published her first poem, “Ida Grey: A Story of Woman’s Sacrifice,” at thirteen. Supporting both women’s education and their daughter’s literary ambitions, Lewis and Isobel sent Amy to Brighton and Hove High School in 1876, where feminist teachings nurtured her liberal attitude toward religious observance and openness to unorthodox ideas, and she graduated in 1879.
Levy became the second Jewish woman to enroll at Cambridge University and the first to attend Newnham College, where she studied classical and modern languages and literature from 1879 to 1881. Her time at Cambridge was shaped by experiences of antisemitism, both from the aristocratic students she encountered and from within feminist and bohemian circles, where she had hoped to find acceptance. Levy drew on these experiences in her writing, especially in her unpublished story “Leopold Leuniger: A Study,” which was written during her university years. This story, which mirrors her own experience at Cambridge, centers on a Jewish undergraduate named Leopold, who accidentally overhears the antisemitic remarks of an aristocratic acquaintance, which causes a crisis of identity within him. Levy eventually left Cambridge without completing her degree, likely due in part to the antisemitism she faced. Nevertheless, this period was pivotal for her literary development, coinciding with the publication of her first poetry collection, Xantippe and Other Verses, in 1881, when she was just twenty years old.
After her departure from Cambridge and through the end of 1884, Levy traveled between London, where she maintained her independence while residing at her family home in Bloomsbury, and various destinations in Europe, including Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Levy’s travels were more than leisurely; they provided her with valuable material that would inform her later writings, including research for the Jewish Chronicle, the most prominent Anglo-Jewish newspaper of the period. While in London, Levy frequented the British Museum Reading Room, a popular meeting place for the era’s leading intellectuals and activists, where she befriended fellow feminists such as Olive Schreiner, Eleanor Marx, Beatrice Potter, and Clementina Black. She also joined the University Club for Ladies, one of London’s first women’s clubs, and her writing career blossomed as she contributed poems, essays, and stories to various London magazines. Through her independence, intellectual pursuits, and friendships, Levy embodied the ideals of the New Woman, contributing to a growing body of work focused on feminist themes and social critique.
Yet Levy was chronically depressed, a condition some scholars attribute to her “doubly marginalized position” as a Jewish woman writing within the culturally Christian, predominantly male milieu of the fin de siècle. In 1884, she published her second poetry collection, A Minor Poet and Other Verse, influenced by the German Pessimist poets, particularly Heinrich Heine. The collection explores melancholic and depressive themes, most notably in its title poem, “A Minor Poet,” which depicts the suicide of a man driven to despair by his exclusion from the literary establishment. It also includes two dramatic monologues, “Xantippe” and “Medea,” inspired by women from Greek history and mythology. In “Xantippe,” the wife of Socrates reflects on her years of intellectual frustration, lamenting her exclusion from the philosophical conversations of her husband and his peers, while “Medea” reimagines the Colchian princess as an outsider, marginalized by Greek society for her ethnicity and gender. Both poems center on exclusion, a theme that reflects Levy’s own experiences of alienation as a Jewish woman in male-dominated intellectual circles and a Christian society that viewed her as an outsider.
Despite her ongoing depression, Levy continued to travel, with her 1886 trip to Florence proving both professionally and personally significant. During her time there, she researched the local Jewish community for a series of articles commissioned by the Jewish Chronicle. These articles, including “The Ghetto in Florence,” “The Jew in Fiction,” “Jewish Humor,” “Jewish Children,” and “Middle-Class Jewish Women of To-Day,” expanded upon themes from her earlier story “Leopold Leuniger: A Study,” illustrating her complex relationship with her Jewishness. In these writings, Levy both celebrates and critiques the Jewish community, referring to it as her “family.” In particular, “Middle-Class Jewish Women of To-Day” examines the tension between her bohemian lifestyle and the constraints she believed Judaism imposed upon women. Around this time, Levy’s translations of Heinrich Heine and Jehudah Halevi were included in Jewish Portraits (1888), a collection edited by Lady Katie Magnus.
While in Florence, Levy also developed a close friendship with feminist writer Violet Paget, better known by her pseudonym Vernon Lee, a prominent figure in the Aesthetic movement. Levy dedicated the sonnets “To Vernon Lee” and “New Love, New Life” to her. She later became romantically involved with Dorothy Blomfield, a poet and close friend of Lee. In 1888, Levy published The Romance of a Shop, a novel about four sisters struggling to navigate societal expectations and financial hardship after their father’s death. A reflection of Levy’s broader literary concerns, the novel explores the plight of the New Woman, especially women’s ambitions and independence in a patriarchal society.
Following the success of The Romance of a Shop, Levy turned her attention to the challenges of Jewish identity in Victorian society with her next novel, Reuben Sachs. Published in 1888, Reuben Sachs offers a satirical portrayal of affluent London Jewry, following Reuben, an ambitious lawyer who ultimately rejects his cousin Judith, whom he loves, for a politically advantageous marriage. Though Levy intended the novel as a critique of the materialism of emancipated Anglo-Jewry, it was widely misinterpreted. Jewish reviewers saw it as an attack on the Jewish community, while many non-Jewish critics viewed it as reinforcing antisemitic stereotypes. The novel’s nuanced use of unreliable narrative voices and social commentary went largely unnoticed. Through Reuben’s moral compromises, Levy critiques complacency within both the Jewish community and broader Victorian society. At the same time, Judith’s longing for the warmth of her community underscores the emotional complexity of belonging to a culture that both nurtured and constrained her—a conflict Levy herself contended with throughout her life.
In May 1889 Levy published a short story titled “Cohen of Trinity,” which revisited the themes of exclusion and antisemitism that provoked controversy in Reuben Sachs. This story features a non-Jewish narrator who repeats the same antisemitic stereotypes that troubled many readers of her previous novel. The Jewish protagonist, Cohen, a newly celebrated author, grapples with the painful realization that his work will never be fully understood or valued by society. Later that year, during the winter of 1889, Levy began working on her third novel, Miss Meredith, which, like many of her short stories, aimed to reach a wider popular audience. However, the intense criticism of Reuben Sachs from both the press and the Jewish community deeply affected Levy, worsening her depression.
At the same time, Levy was also coping with increasing deafness, which further contributed to her sense of isolation. Seeking solace, she returned to her parents’ home, where she focused on finalizing her third and last poetry collection, A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889). The collection, marked by emotional intensity and concise lyricism, was published later that year. Levy’s mental state continued to deteriorate, culminating in her suicide on September 10, 1889, at her parents’ home in Bloomsbury. She ended her life at the age of twenty-seven, leaving behind a body of work that was both praised and criticized. Oscar Wilde, among others, lauded her literary achievements, recognizing the significance of her contributions to Victorian literature. Today, Levy’s writings continue to resonate with modern readers and scholars, who recognize her as a pioneering voice on issues of gender, identity, and cultural belonging in fin-de-siècle Britain.
Works Consulted
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Athens, 2000.
Pullen, Christine. The Woman Who Dared: A Biography of Amy Levy. Kingston University Press, 2010.
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