Amy Levy was educated at Brighton and Hove High School. She was the first Jewish student at Newnham College, Cambridge when she arrived in 1879 but left before her final year. Her first book, The Romance of a Shop, was regarded as an early ‘new woman’ novel in that she wrote about independent women seeking radical change. It depicted four sisters running a London photography business. Levy also wrote stories, essays, and poems for popular or literary periodicals and essays on Jewish culture and literature for The Jewish Chronicle.
Her poetry reveals her feminist concerns, including Xanthippe, a poem in the voice of Socrates’ wife. After Levy met and fell in love with the writer Vernon Lee, both women went on to explore themes of sapphic love in their works. Levy had experienced depression from an early age and took her own life shortly before her 28th birthday.
