Miss Meredith

(Hardback)

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Miss Meredith (1889) is a novel by Amy Levy. Published the year of her tragic death, Miss Meredith is the final novel of a pioneering writer and feminist whose poetry and prose explores the concept of the New Woman while illuminating the realities of Jewish life in nineteenth century London. A hard fight with fortune had been my mother's from the day when, a girl of eighteen, she had left a comfortable home to marry my father for love. Poverty and sicknessthose two redoubtable dragonshad stood ever in the path. Now, even the love which had been by her side for so many years, and helped to comfort them, had vanished into the unknown. Elsie Meredith is keenly aware of her mothers fate in life, and although she wants to be there for her in her time of greatest need, she fears more than anything the prospect of following in her footsteps. [N]either literary nor artistic, neither picturesque like Jenny nor clever like Rosalind, Elsie is a textbook middle child, destined to go through life on her own terms, yet unequipped with the drive or willingness to conform possessed by her sisters. On a whim, she decides to embark for Italy to work as a governess for the Marchesa Brogi. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition Amy Levys Miss Meredith is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.

Author Bio

Amy Levy (1861-1889) was a British poet and novelist. Born in Clapham, London to a Jewish family, she was the second oldest of seven children. Levy developed a passion for literature in her youth, writing a critique of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh and publishing her first poem by the age of fourteen. After excelling at Brighton and Hove High School, Levy became the first Jewish student at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied for several years without completing her degree. Around this time, she befriended such feminist intellectuals as Clementina Black, Ellen Wordsworth Darwin, Eleanor Marx, and Olive Schreiner. As a so-called "New Woman" and lesbian, much of Levy's literary work explores the concerns of nineteenth century feminism. Levy was a romantic partner of Violet Paget, a British storyteller and scholar of Aestheticism who wrote using the pseudonym Vernon Lee. Her first novel, The Romance of a Shop (1888), is powerful story of sisterhood and perseverance in the face of poverty and marginalization. Levy is also known for such poetry collections as A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1884) and A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889). At the age of 27, after a lifetime of depression exacerbated by relationship trouble and her increasing deafness, Levy committed suicide at her parents' home in Endsleigh Gardens.