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Reframing Amy Levy: photography, celebrity, and posthumous representation

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journal contribution
posted on 2021-10-01, 13:57 authored by Sarah ParkerSarah Parker
This article examines the representation of the poet and novelist Amy Levy (1861–89) after her death, focusing on how her photographic portrait becomes the foundation for her posthumous celebrity. Following her suicide at the age of twenty-seven, Levy's life became surrounded by rumour, as commentators sought to explain why a talented young writer would take her life. While reviewers and memoirists interpret her poetry autobiographically, they also turn to her face as key to her character, following theories of physiognomy. In the process, Levy's image, enshrined in a frontispiece photograph by Montabone, becomes a battleground for various ideological interpretations, as writers including Harry Quilter, Katharine Tynan, and Grant Allen set to work reanimating Levy in order to support their own ideas about female education, genius and ‘madness’, degeneration, and Jewish identity. Allen in particular draws on eugenic theories to transform Levy into a damaging fictional portrait in Under Sealed Orders (1894). This novel, combined with various poetic elegies, co-opts Levy's image in ways that resonate with long-standing notions of doomed Romantic genius and the tragic ‘poetess’, a legacy that has implications not only for Levy's enduring reputation, but also for other late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century women poets that followed in her wake.

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • English

Published in

Victoriographies

Volume

12

Issue

1

Pages

52 - 77

Publisher

Edinburgh University Press

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Rights holder

© Edinburgh University Press

Publisher statement

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Edinburgh University Press in Victoriographies. The Version of Record is available online at: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/vic.2022.0447.

Acceptance date

2021-09-30

Publication date

2022-02-28

ISSN

2044-2416

eISSN

2044-2424

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Sarah Parker. Deposit date: 1 October 2021

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