Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), Poet

Dame Edith Sitwell

Sitter associated with 52 portraits
The sister of the writers Sacheverall and Osbert Sitwell, her first volume of poems, The Mother, was published in 1915. In collaboration with Osbert, she wrote Twentieth Century Harlequinade (1916). As editor of Wheels, 1916-21, she encouraged Modernist writers. Façade, her poem set to William Walton's music, established the Sitwells as a cultural phenomenon. Her best-known work includes Gold Coast Customs (1929) and English Eccentrics (1933). Four wartime volumes, including Street Songs (1942) and The Shadow of Cain (1947), were inspired by the blitz and the atom bomb.