The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, 1861-1889

Levy was an Anglo-Jewish writer of the Victorian era, a colleague of Oscar Wilde, a committed feminist and a prolific novelist and poet until her suicide at 27. This extensive selection of her work includes her three novels, seven short stories, eight essays and more than half of her poetry. The novels, although uneven, are the work of a writer of genuine promise. The best of the three, Romance of a Shop , is sort of second-rank George Eliot, less ironic and more sentimental in its account of the lives of four sisters who are forced into the photography business after their father's death. The best-known of the novels, Reuben Sachs , is a startlingly unsympathetic portrait of the London Jewish community, evincing the tension between assimilation and the assertion of Jewish identity, and a love-hate fascination with Jewish materialism. Levy's verse is good, but very much of its period; the essays are intelligently argued, but whenever she touches on Jewish themes, her palpable distaste is oppressive. New's ( Laurence Sterne As Satirist ) annotations are valuable, and his introduction is useful, although one wishes there were more historical and biographical background and less lit crit. (June)