Sitwell, Edith (Louisa) (1887–1964)

English poet, biographer, and critic. Her verse has an imaginative and rhythmic intensity. Her series of poems Facade (1922) was performed as recitations to the specially written music of William Walton (1923).

Her Collected Poems appeared in 1930 (new edition 1993). Her prose works include Aspects of Modern Poetry (1934) and The Queens and the Hive (1962). She was the sister of Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. She was made a DBE in 1954.

Sitwell was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, and began her career as a poet modestly with The Mother and Other Poems (1915). She edited the poetry journal Wheels (1916–21), a showcase for young poets fighting an artistic revolt against pastoral Georgian verse. The visual imagery and verbal music of her verse influenced T S Eliot and W B Yeats. Later work, especially Street Songs (1942) and The Song of the Cold (1945), is more preoccupied with religious themes and symbolism. Other books of verse included Clown's Houses (1918), The Sleeping Beauty (1924), Gold Coast Customs (1929), The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems 1920–47 (1948), and Gardeners and Astronomers (1953). Her prose works include Poetry and Criticism, an Essay (1925), Alexander Pope (1930), The English Eccentrics (1933), Victoria of England (1936), and Fanfare for Elizabeth (1946). Her autobiography, Taken Care Of, was published (1965).