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Amy Levy

Born

in Clapham, London, The United Kingdom

November 10, 1861

Died

September 10, 1889

Genre

Fiction, Poetry

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Levy was born in Clapham, London, the second daughter of Lewis Levy and Isobel Levin. Her Jewish family was mildly observant, but as an adult Levy no longer practised Judaism; she continued to identify with the Jews as a people.

She was educated at Brighton High School, Brighton, and studied at Newnham College, Cambridge; she was the first Jewish student at Newnham, when she arrived in 1879, but left after four terms.

Her circle of friends included Clementina Black, Dollie Radford, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx), and Olive Schreiner. Levy wrote stories, essays, and poems for periodicals, some popular and others literary. Her writing career began early; her poem "Ida Grey" appearing in the journal the Pelican when she was only fourteen. Levy was born in Clapham, London, the second daughter of Lewis Levy and Isobel Levin. Her Jewish family was mildly observant, but as an adult Levy no longer practised Judaism; she continued to identify with the Jews as a people.

She was educated at Brighton High School, Brighton, and studied at Newnham College, Cambridge; she was the first Jewish student at Newnham, when she arrived in 1879, but left after four terms.

Her circle of friends included Clementina Black, Dollie Radford, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx), and Olive Schreiner. Levy wrote stories, essays, and poems for periodicals, some popular and others literary. Her writing career began early; her poem "Ida Grey" appearing in the journal the Pelican when she was only fourteen. The stories "Cohen of Trinity" and "Wise in Their Generation," both published in Oscar Wilde's magazine "Women's World," are among her best. Her second novel Reuben Sachs (1888) was concerned with Jewish identity and mores in the England of her time (and was consequently controversial); Her first novel Romance of a Shop (1888) depicts four sisters who experience the pleasures and hardships of running a business in London during the 1880s. Other writings as well, including the daring Ballad of Religion and Marriage, reveal feminist concerns. Xantippe and Other Verses (1881) includes a poem in the voice of Socrates's wife; the volume A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884) has dramatic monologues too, as well as lyric poems. In 1886, Levy began writing a series of essays on Jewish culture and literature for the Jewish Chronicle, including The Ghetto at Florence, The Jew in Fiction, Jewish Humour and Jewish Children. Her final book of poems, A London Plane-Tree (1889), contains lyrics that are among the first to show the influence of French symbolism.

Traveling in Europe, she met Vernon Lee in Florence in 1886, and it has been said that she fell in love with her. Vernon Lee (Violet Paget), the fiction writer and literary theorist, was six years older, and inspired the poem To Vernon Lee.

Despite many friends and an active literary life, Levy had suffered from episodes of major depression from an early age which, together with her growing deafness, led her to commit suicide on September 10, 1889, at the age of twenty-seven, by inhaling carbon monoxide. Oscar Wilde wrote an obituary for her in Women's World in which he praised her gifts.
-Wikipedia ...more

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Amy Levy’s books

Average rating: 3.54 · 1,704 ratings · 268 reviews · 102 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Romance of a Shop 3.54 avg rating — 959 ratings — published 1888 — 41 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Reuben Sachs 3.40 avg rating — 512 ratings — published 1888 — 55 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A London Plane Tree And Other Verse 3.88 avg rating — 43 ratings — published 2008 — 56 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Miss Meredith 3.25 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 2015 — 33 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Minor Poet And Other Verse 4.25 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 1889 — 36 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Xantippe and Other Verse 3.65 avg rating — 23 ratings — published 2012 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Medea 3.89 avg rating — 19 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, 1861-1889 by Amy Levy, Melvyn New (Editor) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1993 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Romance of a Shop (Smith & Taylor Classics Book 9) 4.25 avg rating — 8 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Collected Poems of Amy Levy 4.60 avg rating — 5 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Amy Levy (?)

“Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief; it is only when we come face to face with it that we find the great mystery so cruelly hard to realise; for death, like love, is ever old and ever new.”
― Amy Levy, The Romance of a Shop

tags: death

3 likes

“For good or evil, these waifs on the great stream of London life had drifted together; how long the current should continue thus to bear them side by side- how long, indeed, they should float on the surface of the stream at all, was a question with which for the time being, they did not very much trouble themselves.”
― Amy Levy, The Romance of a Shop

2 likes

“That she had been brought face to face with the sterner side of life, had lost some illusions, suffered some pain, she did not regret. It seemed to her that she had not paid too great a price for the increased reality of her present existence.”
― Amy Levy, The Romance of a Shop

tags: determination, existence, hardships, life, reality

1 likes

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Polls

Old School Classics December 2026 Poll

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1848, 120 pages

49 votes, 26.8%

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, 1908, 119 pages

43 votes, 23.5%

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, 1896, 160 pages

32 votes, 17.5%

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826, 350 pages

21 votes, 11.5%

The Semi-Detached House by Emily Eden, 1859, 172 pages

14 votes, 7.7%

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey, 1912, 320 pages

13 votes, 7.1%

The Romance of a Shop by Amy Levy, 1888, 194 pages

11 votes, 6.0%

183 total votes

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Amy Levy’s Followers (40)

Amy Levy

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