Edith Sitwell – författare

No hive can tolerate two Queens. In the fatal clash between the Protestant Queen of England and the Catholic Queen of Scots, many were determined that 'The death of Mary is the life of Elizabeth'.In this moving chronicle a modern poet magnificently recaptures the splendid colour and sordid intrigue of the most spectacular period of history in Britain.

First published in 1943, this is a selection of writings from Dr. Sitwell's private notebooks. It includes essays on prosody, the role of the poet, the nature of poetry, and includes her full length work 'A Notebook on William Shakespeare', as well as discussion of Chaucer, Herrick, Wordsworth, Pope and Byron amongst others.The section on Shakespeare consists of essays on the general aspect of the plays - those great hymns to the principle and the glory of life. There are long essays on King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet. Miss Sitwell believes, with all humility, that she has discovered new sources of the inspiration of King Lear, throwing a new light on the whole play , and giving us new meaning to the mad scenes, of an unsurpassable grandeur, depth and terror. There are essays on many of the comedies, and long passages about the Fools and Clowns, all of which serve to illiminate Shakespeare's mighty and many-sided genius.

Dame Edith Sitwell died while this autobiography was in the course of printing. One of the last acts of her life was to approve the 'specimen page' from the printer. She did not live to correct her proofs and what, if any, changes she might have made is a matter for conjecture. The book, as she wrote it, must now stand as the last prose work to come from a great writer of the last century and a wise, witty and compassionate woman. 'I trust', she wrote, 'that I have hurt nobody.'Dame Edith was much more than one of the leading English poets of her lifetime. Long, long before the age of television introduced the synthetic, professional 'personality', she was a personality without the inverted commas, and thus became a familiar figure to a public far wider than the readership of her poetry, criticism and essays. With her remarkable brothers, she stood for certain important and lasting I qualities in the artistic life of the nation-for the war against philistinism, for a progressive outlook that in its day seemed, and was, rebellious, and yet for a spirit of continuity and tradition in art that has become apparent to the layman only in the perspective of time. This sense of tradition and respect for the past was by no means incompatible with a degree of eccentricity-which gives Taken Care Of its remarkable and unique flavour.

First published in 1932, this is the story of eighteenth century Bath, where Beau Nash ruled as uncrowned king for so many years, the fashionable members of English society found a splendid justification for improving their health and enjoying themselves at the same time. They took the waters assiduously, gambled excessively, danced away the evenings at cotillion balls, and spent the mornings strolling along the Parades in their elegant finery, and exchanging gossip in the coffee houses. Writers, actors, artists and politicians shared the city's delights with exalted members of the peerage; and over them all, the great Beau presided with avuncular authority. This book, written with all the skill and visionary commitment of an established poet, recreates the atmosphere of Bath's famous century superbly, and faithfully mirrors several of the well-known personalities who graced the period with their wit, their talent and their eccentricity. Here is Nash himself, generous to a fault, whose chief claim to fame must surely be the widespread improvement in English social behaviour that his strict control initiated; the charming blue-stocking, Elizabeth Montagu, who hated card games and strove to encourage literary causeries; the irascible Captain Thicknesse; the ascetic religious reformer, the Countess of Huntingdon; the famous "limner", Thomas Gainsborough; Sarah Siddons, who bewitched almost everyone when she played at the old Orchard Street theatre; the talented, gentle Ralph Allen, who built Prior Park; that old knave James Quin, who retired to Bath after a hugely successful career on the London stage; and several others. Against a meticulously researched background, they are all convincingly brought to life.

First published in 1948, this book may be described as Dame Edith Sitwell's personal notebook. It consists of essays on the subject of the general aspect of the plays-those great hymns to the principle and the glory of life, in which there are the same differences in nature, in matter, in light, in darkness, in movement, that we find in the universe, and in which the characters are so vast they seem each an element (Water, Hamlet; Air, Romeo and Juliet; Fire, King Lear) and which yet bear the stamp of our common humanity, made greater and more universal. There are long essays on King Lear, Macbeth, Othello and Hamlet. Dame Edith believes, with all humility, that she has discovered new sources of the inspiration of King Lear, throwing a new light on the whole play, and giving new meanings to the mad scenes, of an unsurpassable grandeur, depth, and terror. There are shorter essays also on other of the tragedies. The keynotes of many of the plays are examined (not all the plays are discussed), a phrase is studied and will be found to hold the whole meaning of the play.There are essays on many of the comedies, and long passages about the Fools and Clowns. Connecting levels are traced between the philosophies of the plays. There are, too, running commentaries on Shakespeare as that ' common-kissing Titan ', and, since the book is a personal notebook, the author makes copious quotations from the writings of Shakespearean scholars who have thrown light on the various aspects of which she treats, and from works on other subjects which also serve to illumine his mighty and many-sided genius.

Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was, through four decades, the most prominent and celebrated woman poet in Britain. Among the notable admirers of her work were Siegfried Sassoon, WB Yeats and Gertrude Stein, Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore. Just after her death, Allen Tate described her in The New York Times as 'one of the great poets of the twentieth century'. Even as one allows for the ebb and flow of literary reputations, Edith Sitwell will have permanent claim on the attention of readers and literary scholars. She and her two brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, were the focus of a movement in English Literature described as an 'alternative Bloomsbury'. This volume includes unpublished letters to many significant figures, including WB Yeats, Bertrand Russell and Benjamin Britten. It also contains letters that illuminate Sitwell's relations with other women writers, among them, Gertrude Stein and Rosamond Lehmann.'I am besotted with this dotty old bat. Britain's most celebrated and eccentric female poet, she dashed off reams of witty, newsy, mischievous letters in exquisitely beautiful prose. Every letter is a gem' - Val Hennessy (one of her top ten books for 1997), Daily Mail