Amy Levy was the first Jewish student at Newnham College, Cambridge, though she left after four semesters. She began publishing in her teens, and brought out her first volume of poetry in 1881. She contributed to some of the leading feminist and women's periodicals of her day, including Emily Faithfull's Victoria Magazine and Oscar Wilde's Woman's World. She frequented London literary circles and was friends with some of the leading women writers of her day, including Vernon Lee and Olive Schreiner, as well as with pioneering feminist Clementina Black. Levy wrote fiction and essays on the position of women within Judaism, and showed a strong interest in socialism. Her novel Reuben Sachs was translated into German by Elearnor Marx, the daughter of Karl Marx. Amy Levy committed suicide, for reasons that are unclear, at the age of twenty-seven.
"Madgalen"
From A Minor Poet and Other Verse (1891; first published 1884)