14/11/2025
The Victorian writer Amy Levy has resurfaced, with numerous articles in the press about the papers of this le***an Jewish being released - an example of the coverage from the Guardian: www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/13/archives-amy-levy-q***r-jewish-writer-admired-by-oscar-wilde-unsealed
The late Elaine Feinstein was one of those who showed interest in Levy, who, like Feinstein, went to Newnham College at Cambridge University. In her poem 'Amy Levy', Feinstein wrote:
"Listen, I am the first of my kind and
not without friends or recognition,
but my name belongs with my family
in Bayswater, where the ghosts
of wealthy Sephardim line the walls,
and there I am alien because I sing.
Here, it is my name that makes me strange.
A hundred years on, is it still the same?"
Elaine, who remarked "The danger of being at the periphery is that you never quite pe*****te sufficiently not to disappear into darkness, rather as Amy Levy did", would have been pleased to see Levy appearing again from the darkness.
We carried this poem in a selection of Elaine's work in Passionate Renewal, an anthology of postwar Jewish poetry., published in 2001.
Levy’s work was ‘ahead of her time’ and speaks to current debate around feminism, LGBTQ+ literature and Jewish identity, say researchers
