Edith Sitwell: Fire of the Mind

by Elizabeth Salter, Allanah Harper

hardcover with dust jacket

Genres: Poetry

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Elizabeth Fulton Salter (2 Oct 1918-14 Mar 1981) was born into a Barossa Valley pioneering family which opened one of South Australia's first wineries.

An Australian expatriate author, Salter went to the United Kingdom in the 1952 and was later secretary to Dame Edith Sitwell from 1956 until Sitwell's death in 1964. During that time she wrote and published mystery novels. Later she wrote biographies.

She joined the ABC as a record librarian and script writer. During World War II she was WAAF officer in charge of entertainment. After Salter left Australia for England, she worked for the BBC and wrote professionally.

Select bibliography:
Daisy Bates: Queen of the Never Never
The lost impressionist
Dame Edith Sitwell
Tails she dies (unpublished on her death)
Once upon a tombstone
The voice of the peacock
Will to survive
Silver rain.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it is a difficult biographical anthology to read through, I enjoyed this book very much. The book is composed of prose writings by Dame Edith with sections of her poetry interspersed between the prose. I must confess that I found the prose sections to be more interesting than the poetry, mainly because Sitwell's poetry is a bit obscure to me.

Sitwell was born into a family of writers: Her brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, also were famous during the time. Osbert is most know for his five-part autobiographical series that is on my to-read list. This is indeed a fascinating family. The brothers' comments about their sister and her writings appear in the book as well.

Sitwell's writings created feelings of identification in me as we had similar experiences as children and young adults - always feeling that one is on the outside looking through the window at the party but never invited in; we share the sense of being the "outsider", never being accepted into society as an equal. She was a tall, gangly girl with huge eyes and a very long face, and she grew older her features became more emphatic. Sitwell had started writing poetry at a very young age, and even then she created images that are sometimes brilliant. Critics and the literary community soon termed Sitwell's poetical style "Imagist", and other poets were associated with this style as time went on.

A true eccentric, Edith Sitwell's life and writings both make for some intriguing, thought-provoking reading.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the prose more than the poetry, but the entire work seems to be littered with Greek and other mythological references that I either didn't get or didn't care about.