Victorian Sappho

by Yopie Prins

What is Sappho, except a name? Although the Greek archaic lyrics attributed to Sappho of Lesbos survive only in fragments, she has been invoked for many centuries as the original woman poet, singing at the origins of a Western lyric tradition. Victorian Sappho traces the emergence of this idealized feminine figure through reconstructions of the Sapphic fragments in late-nineteenth-century England. Yopie Prins argues that the Victorian period...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691059195
• ISBN13: 9780691059198
• Release Date: February 1999
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Find out who the most Sapphic poet of the Victorian Period was!

Are you studying Sappho? How about Michael Field or Algernon Swinburne? This book covers in detail how Victorian poets were or were not like the Greek poet Sappho. During the Victorian time period, fragments were published of Sappho's work. This took the Victorians by storm. Dr. Henry T. Wharton published a book about Sappho entitled "Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation." Many writers and artists of the time were mesmerized by his book. Prin tells us that his book had a "broad circulation" and was reprinted 4 times between 1887-1907. Prins is a Victorian scholar with a great deal of knowledge to bestow. In this particular book, she talks about the connection between Sappho's writing and legend and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Christina Rossetti; Mary Robinson; John Addington Symonds; Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning; and many others. Prins states in her book "Rather than organizing the chapters to imply a developing tradition or a linear progression, I emphasize the continual recirculation of Sappho within Victorian poetry" (p. 15).