For decades, not much has been known about Amy Levy, one of Victorian literature's most unique voices, formerly hailed as a genius by Oscar Wilde.
But now, readers will get the chance to learn more with a author whose groundbreaking work examined women’s independence, the Jewish experience, and homosexual longing.
“It is uncommon nowadays for a coherent corpus of a Victorian-era author’s papers to be discovered,” noted a lead archivist. “Our goal was to act on this to make her archive open in the place where she attended university and where she returned to even in the final days of her life.”
An Illustrious Life
The author was born in 1861 into a bourgeois Jewish family in London and enrolled at Newnham College in 1879, establishing herself as the next Jewish woman among Cambridge’s pioneering group of female undergraduates.
She produced three volumes of poetry, three novels – including Reuben Sachs and The Romance of a Shop – many articles and a set of pieces for the Jewish Chronicle. When she died by suicide in 1889, at the age of 27, she was regarded by her contemporaries as an extraordinary gift, with Oscar Wilde composing a tribute and lauding the “sincerity, candor, and sadness” of her work.
A Multifaceted Persona
A noted academic working on a biographical study about Levy expressed that she believed the papers would not only revolutionize academic study but also be of appeal to a wider public.
“I encountered Amy’s poetry decades ago and they have haunted me ever since,” the professor said. “Not only was she a fine and evocative writer, but she was also so complicated. She embraced her Jewish heritage, but she was also an agnostic. She seemed to interact positively with men, but she was a queer woman.”
The expert explained that Levy had cultivated a social network at Newnham and also in her adult life, especially through Violet Paget “who was highly sociable to a wide circle including Wilde. Levy became part of Lee’s circle, in fact she became enamored with her, a love that unfortunately was never returned.
“When Wilde was given a one-page manuscript from Levy for his magazine the Woman’s World, he was astonished by the story and called Levy a girl of genius.”
An Enduring Impact
Scholars believe Levy’s work connects meaningfully to contemporary conversations around feminism, queer writing and the Jewish plight and say she anticipated discourse that would come well after her death.
“She was forward-thinking, which was possibly one of the reasons she struggled to find her niche,” the researcher said. “She struggled with queer identity and how she belonged in a conventional world. Matrimony was not an option for her, but neither was having a career like a school teacher, which she abandoned to become a writer full-time.
“She has long been fascinating to people who research Jewish women and their history. And today, when we have in the wake of the international epidemic so many the younger generation struggling with melancholy, nervousness, psychological distress, even self-harm, understanding her might be of benefit and consolation to a broader audience too,” the expert said.
The Last Months
The assemblage includes Levy’s 1889 personal diary, in which ever more scant entries record the final months before her death from inhaling carbon monoxide. A last, poignant entry, written the day before she died, said: “Spent the day alone at home.” But the expert said Levy in many ways had “a dynamic, fulfilling, stimulating existence” too.
“She could be witty at times, which can be seen in her writings. She did experience a set of three hardships, including neuralgia. She was growing increasingly deaf, which results in withdrawal from society and seclusion. And she also struggled with depression.
“Though she never quite found happiness, it was always something she upheld: the entitlement to joy, even elated.”
