Sarah Bradford
Not All Façade
Edith Sitwell: Avant Garde Poet, English Genius
By Richard Greene
Virago 532pp £25 order from our bookshop
Edith Sitwell was a myth-maker par excellence. Seizing on a family connection to the Beauforts and John of Gaunt, she presented herself as a medieval tomb sculpture, emphasising her long face, nose and hands with flowing robes, extraordinary jewellery, and headdresses. She could have been the classic spinster in straitened circumstances, enduring a dull life in cold rooms with her cats. Instead she became a literary celebrity, famed almost as much for her Gothic looks and public spats as for her poetry. She was made a dame and showered with honorary doctorates, was interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face, and mixed with stars like Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo. Yet since her death in 1964 her reputation as a poet has been in freefall. Now Richard Greene, editor of her selected letters, has made a convincing case for her peculiar genius.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw
'Thirkell was a product of her time and her class. For her there are no sacred cows, barring those that win ribbons at the Barchester Agricultural.'
The novelist Angela Thirkell is due a revival, says Patricia T O'Conner (£).
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad