A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse

A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse (1889) is a poetry collection by Amy Levy. Published in the year of her death at the age of 27, A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse is the work 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. “Green is the plane-tree in the square, / The other trees are brown; / They droop and pine for country air; / The plane-tree loves the town.” In these lyric poems exploring the sights and sounds of Victorian London, Amy Levy identifies herself with a modern, urban setting, refusing to rely on tradition in poetry or in life: “Others the country take for choice, / And hold the town in scorn; / But she has listened to the voice / On city breezes borne.” Attuned to the urban bustle of work and play, Levy presages the malaise and discontent more often associated with Modernist writers of the early twentieth century: “Dead-tired, dog tired, as the vivid day / Fails and slackens and fades away.― / The sky that was so blue before / With sudden clouds is shrouded o’er.” Having struggled with depression her whole life, Levy was keenly aware of poetry’s ability to capture the depths of human emotion. “To Vernon Lee,” addressed to her lover, herself a famous writer, Levy provides a self-portrait in the throes of heartache, recalling with sorrow a love consigned to the past: “A snowy blackthorn flowered beyond my reach; / You broke a branch and gave it to me there; / […] / And of the gifts the gods had given to each― / Hope unto you, and unto me Despair.” This edition Amy Levy’s A London Plane-Tree and Other Verse is a classic work of British literature reimagined for modern readers.

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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.