Edith Louisa Sitwell DBE (1887 - 1964)

Born 7 Sep 1887 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Died 9 Dec 1964 at age 77 in Central London, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Edith Sitwell DBE was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England.

Edith Sitwell DBE is Notable.

Edith Louisa Sitwell was born on the 7th September, 1887 at Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom. She spent most of her childhood at the family home, Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire.
She was the daughter of Sir George Sitwell 4th Bt and Ida Emily Augusta Denison.

She never married, but had many male friendships with fellow poets and other unavailable (gay) men.
Her decision not to marry may have been because she inherited Marfan syndrome and did not want to pass it on to the next generation.

Life with her Governess
She was educated at home and began writing poetry when she was about twenty, but the major change in her life came when she moved to London in 1914, at the age of 26, to live in a small flat in Pembridge Mansions, Bayswater, Westminster, London, United Kingdom, (not far from Kensington Palace) with Helen Rootham (1875–1938), who was her former Governess since 1903. Helen seemed to have been Edith's "mother figure", because Edith did not get on with her own mother, Ida Sitwell.
Helen Rootham died of spinal cancer in 1938.

Poet
Poet, novelist, biographer and essayist, Edith published a number of poems during the 1920s which exploited the musical qualities of the language.
The poems she wrote during the Second World War included: Street Songs (1942) , The Song of the Cold (1945), and The Shadow of Cain (1947), all of which were much praised.
"Still Falls the Rain" about the London Blitz, remains perhaps her best-known poem; it was set to music by Benjamin Britten as Canticle III: Still Falls the Rain.

Author
She also wrote books - biographical studies which included that of Alexander Pope and 'The English Eccentrics', and her historical novels included one on Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Honours

• Edith had four honorary doctorates from Leeds, Durham, Oxford, and Sheffield universities bestowed upon her.
• Dame Edith Sitwell became a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the 1954 Queen's birthday honours list.

Failing health and troubles with David Horner, her brother Osbert's lover, forced Sitwell to move away from her childhood home in Renshaw and spend the final years of her life in a Queen Anne style cottage she called "Bryher House" in Hempstead, near Gillingham, Kent in South East England.

Death
She died of cerebral haemorrhage at St Thomas' Hospital, Central London, England, United Kingdom, Registration District, Lambeth, on the 9th December 1964 at the age of 77. Burial
She is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary & St Peter, Weedon Lois, Northamptonshire, England, United Kingdom. ^[1] Poets' Graves: ^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ "Burial Entry" Dame Edith Sitwell. Died 9 Dec 1964 St Thomas' Hospital, London. Citing this Record: Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 16 November 2020), memorial page for Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 Sep 1887–9 Dec 1964), Find a Grave Memorial no. 10744924, citing St Mary and St Peter Churchyard, Weedon Lois, South Northamptonshire Borough, Northamptonshire, England ; Maintained by Find A Grave .
2. ↑ Poets' Graves: Edith Sitwell: (https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/sitwell.html)

• Sitwells Greatest Legacy: By Allen, Brooke (https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-446932578/the-sitwells-greatest-legacy)

• Official Roll of the Baronetage

• Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage (103rd Edition); Burke's Peerage; pp. 2237–2238.

• Dame Edith Sitwell Collection at the Wikipedia: Ransom Humanities Research Center

See also:

• 'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell, published by The Hogarth Press, Pimlico, London in 1996. ISBN 0 7126 7450 0, includes extensive family trees. Hundreds of friends, professional connections and people in the 'Bloomsbury set' are also mentioned in the text.'Virginia Woolf' a biography by her nephew Quentin Bell