Ada Leverson

Ada Leverson

Ada Leverson (born October 10, 1862 in London , † August 30, 1933 in London), born Ada Beddington, was an English writer . She was a friend of Oscar Wilde .

Life

Ada Esther Beddington was born as the daughter of the pianist Zillah Beddington and the merchant Samuel Henry Beddington, who traded in wool. One of her eight younger siblings died in childhood. Her youngest sister, Violet, was the wife of Sidney Schiff , and her Paris home was the focus of the literary and artistic scene of the early 20th century. Ada Beddington grew up in a Jewish, upper-class and culturally active family in Bayswater near Hyde Park . She received lessons in English, German, French, Latin and Greek. Her mother's influence gave her musical support, playing the piano and composing smaller pieces. She was particularly interested in literature, including John Keats , Thackeray , Flaubert and Austen . At the age of 19, against the wishes of her family, she married the much older Ernest Leverson (1852–1921), whose father was a diamond dealer. Ernest Leverson had an illegitimate daughter whom he had kept from Ada. He prefers resorts with casinos because he is passionate about gambling. The marriage did not turn out to be a happy one and turned out to be an expedient arrangement until it broke up in 1905 when Ernest moved to Canada . Ada Leverson had a brief liaison with the Irish writer George Moore .

Act

At the turn of the century she ran a salon in which personalities such as the writers Oscar Wilde, Alfred Douglas , George Moore, John Gray , André Raffalovich and Somerset Maugham , the caricaturist Max Beerbohm , the illustrator Charles Ricketts, the musician Paolo Tosti , the actors Herbert Beerbohm and Charles Hawtrey frequented. Oscar Wilde met her in 1892. She introduced him to Aubrey Beardsley . Her friends included the siblings Edith Sitwell , Osbert Sitwell , whom she admired, and Sachverell Sitwell .

She began her writing career with short publications and parodies in Punch and Black and White magazines, and later in The English Review and The Criterion , edited by TS Eliot . To the amusement of Oscar Wilde, she wrote a parody of The Portrait of Dorian Gray . She also parodied The Importance of Being Earnest (German title: Ernst sein ist alles or Bunbury) under the title The Advisability of Not Being Brought up in a Handbag. A Trivial Tragedy for Wonderful People .

Wilde, whose closest friend she had been since 1892, called her the "Sphinx" (or "Gilded Sphinx of Golden Memory") while remaining loyal to him as one of the few personalities in London's society even after his conviction.

After separating from her husband, her financial situation worsened and she began to work increasingly as a journalist. However, this income was not enough, so she started writing novels. She wrote her debut The Twelfth Hour in 1907. Her six novels are all set in London. Unlike Jane Austen's novels, which all end with marriage, Leverson's novels revolve around how her characters develop in marriage. Topics are love, jealousy, longing for a harmonious partnership, disappointed future dreams and how the protagonists deal with them. She plays with Victorian conventions and the emancipation of women at the beginning of the 20th century. She writes mostly ironically distant and likes to use dialogue as a stylistic device.

Works

• The Twelfth Hour (1907)
• Love's Shadow (1908)
• The Limit (1911)
• Tenterhooks (1912)
• Bird of Paradise (1914)
• Love at Second Sight (1916), German: "Love at second sight", Insel Verlag, ISBN 3-458-33892-6
• Letters To The Sphinx From Oscar Wilde and Reminiscences of the Author (1930)
• The novels Love's Shadow, Tenterhooks and Love at Second Sight belong to the trilogy “The Little Ottleys”.

biography

• Violet Wyndham (1963): The Sphinx and her Circle: A biographical sketch of Ada Leverson 1862-1933
• Charles Burkhart (1973): Ada Leverson
• Julie Speedie (1993): Wonderful Sphinx: The Biography of Ada Leverson , London

Web links

• Literature by and about Ada Leverson in the catalog of the German National Library