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Ethel Smyth: A woman of substance

2021-08-18T10:25:00

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Ethel Smyth’s talents as a composer have long been overshadowed by her political activism and her battles for women’s rights. In her 150th anniversary year, it’s time to celebrate her distinctive string music, says Catherine Nelson, in this article, taken from the August 2008 issue

The life story of Ethel Smyth is the stuff of headlines. Born in 1858, she was a militant supporter of the British women’s suffrage movement, which led to a two-month spell in London’s Holloway Prison alongside her friend Emmeline Pankhurst; she was a keen mountaineer and golfer; and she fell in love with the writer Virginia Woolf at the ripe age of 71. Her compositional prowess, though no less extraordinary, tends to be overshadowed by her political activism…

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