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The Sitwells
The Sitwell siblings included poets and writers Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell
Other names
Edith (Louisa) Sitwell (b. 7 September 1887; d. 9 December 1964)
(Francis) Osbert (Sacheverell) Sitwell (b. 6 December 1892; d. 4 May 1969)
Sacheverell Sitwell (b. 15 November 1897; d. 1 October 1988)
Place of birth
Place of death
London (Edith); Montegufoni, Italy (Osbert); Towcester, Northamptonshire (Sacheverell)
About
The three Sitwell siblings – Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell – were poets, writers and patrons of artists, who fashioned themselves as artistic leaders in the 1920s and 1930s, rivalling those in the Bloomsbury Group. They came from an aristocratic and wealthy family, and spent most of their childhood at Renishaw Hall, the family’s stately home in Derbyshire. In the 1910s they moved to London. Their first venture was an annual anthology of modern verse called Wheels, edited by Edith Sitwell from 1916 to 1921, which collected the work of many young talents such as Nancy Cunard, Wilfred Owen and Aldous Huxley, as well as their own poems. The Sitwells achieved legendary status when Edith gave a reading of her poetry collection Façade in London’s Aeolian Hall in 1923; her poems were accompanied by orchestral music by William Walton, and the poet controversially spoke using a Sengerphone, with her back towards the audience. The Sitwells considered themselves as rebels against ‘philistine’ values and accepted artistic conventions. They thrived on hostile criticism and were united against their sworn ‘enemies’, many of whom were once their close friends, such as Noël Coward and Wyndham Lewis. The Sitwells became estranged from D. H. Lawrence over his publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928).
All three Sitwells were prolific writers, but they are best remembered as cultural icons due to their style and personality. C. L. R. James, who recorded his meeting with Edith Sitwell in 1932, remembers how her reputation as an eccentric artist was well known in Trinidad, and, upon meeting her, he described her as ‘a striking figure [and] even more decidedly a personality’. The Sitwells defined themselves against the Cambridge-oriented Bloomsbury Group but nevertheless had close relationships with many of its members and were often spotted at its social functions. Mulk Raj Anand, in Conversations in Bloomsbury, records his meeting with Edith Sitwell at a party and her conversation with D. H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley. Edith was a close friend of Tambimuttu, and both she and Osbert were contributors to his Poetry London.
Harold Acton, Kingsley Amis, Mulk Raj Anand, Michael Arlen, George Barker, Sylvia Beach, Cecil Beaton, Clive Bell, Max Beerbohm, Maurice Bowra, Bryher (Winifred Ellerman), Stella Bowen, Roy Campbell, Maurice Carpenter, Jean Cocteau, Cyril Connolly, Noël Coward, Anthony Cronin, Nancy Cunard, Bonamy Dobree, Valentine Dobree, Richard Eberhart, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Foster, Northrop Fry, Roger Fry, John Gawsworth, Edmund Gosse, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Alec Guinness, John Hayward, Robert Herring, David Horner, Aldous Huxley, C. L. R. James, C. Richard Jennings, C. E. M. Joad, Maynard Keynes, Constant Lambert, D. H. Lawrence, John Lehmann, Wyndham Lewis, Jack Lindsay, Raymond Marriott, Elkin Mathews, Somerset Maugham, Charlotte Mew, Alida Monro, Harold Monro, Marianne Moore, John Middleton Murry, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen, William Plomer, Katherine Ann Porter, Ezra Pound, J. B. Priestley, Herbert Read, Max Reinhardt, George Russell, Vita Sackville-West, Siegfried Sassoon, Sydney Schiff, Violet Schiff, Nikhil Sen, George Bernard Shaw, Walter Sickert, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, Stephen Spender, Gertrude Stein, Lytton Strachey, Meary James Tambimuttu, Pavel Tchelichew, Dylan Thomas, Feliks Topolski, Iris Tree, Sherard Vines, Arthur Waley, William Walton, Evelyn Waugh, Denton Welch, Rebecca West, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, W. B. Yeats, Beryl de Zoete.
Edith Sitwell:
The Mother and Other Poems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1915)
(ed.) Wheels: An Anthology of Verse (Blackwell: Oxford, 1916–21)
Clowns’ Houses (Oxford: Blackwell, 1918)
The Wooden Pegasus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1920)
Façade (Kensington: Favil Press, 1922)
Bucolic Comedies (London: Duckworth, 1923)
The Sleeping Beauty (London: Duckworth, 1924)
Troy Park (London: Duckworth, 1925)
Poetry and Criticism (London: Hogarth Press, 1925)
Elegy on Dead Fashion (London: Duckworth, 1926)
Rustic Elegies (London: Duckworth, 1927)
Popular Song, illustrated with designs by Edward Bawden (London: Faber & Gwyer, 1928)
Five Poems (London: Duckworth, 1928)
Gold Coast Customs (London: Duckworth, 1929)
Alexander Pope (London: Faber & Faber, 1930)
(ed.) The Pleasures of Poetry: A Critical Anthology (London: Duckworth, 1930–2)
Epithalamium (London: G. Duckworth & Co., 1931)
Jane Barston, with a drawing by R. A. Davies (London: Faber & Faber, 1931)
In Spring, with wood engravings by Edward Carrick (London: privately printed, 1931)
Bath (London: Faber & Faber, 1932)
The English Eccentrics (London: Faber & Faber, 1933; revised and enlarged edition, London: Dobson, 1958)
Five Variations on a Theme (London: Duckworth, 1933)
Aspects of Modern Poetry (London: Duckworth, 1934)
Victoria of England (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)
Selected Poems (London: Duckworth, 1936)
I Live Under a Black Sun (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937)
(ed.) Edith Sitwell’s Anthology (London: Victor Gollancz, 1940)
Poems New and Old (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)
(ed.) Look: The Sun (London: Victor Gollancz, 1941)
Street Songs (London: Macmillan, 1942)
English Women (London: Collins, 1942)
A Poet’s Notebook (London: Macmillan, 1943)
Green Song & Other Poems (London: Macmillan, 1944)
(ed.) Planet and Glow-Worm: A Book for the Sleepless (London: Macmillan & Co., 1944)
The Song of the Cold (London: Macmillan, 1945)
Fanfare for Elizabeth (London: Macmillan, 1946)
The Shadow of Cain (London: Lehmann, 1947)
A Notebook on William Shakespeare (London: Macmillan, 1948)
‘For T. S. Eliot’, in T. S. Eliot: A Symposium, from Conrad Aiken and Others, complied by Richard March and Tambimuttu (London: Editions Poetry, 1948), pp. 33–4
The Canticle of the Rose: Selected Poems, 1920–1947 (London: Macmillan, 1949)
Poor Men’s Music (London: Fore Publications, 1950)
(ed.) A Book of the Winter (London: Macmillan & Co., 1950)
(ed.) The American Genius (London: John Lehmann, 1951)
Gardeners and Astronomers (London: Macmillan, 1953)
‘Coming to London’, in William Plomer and Leonard Woolf (eds) Coming to London (London: Phoenix House, 1957), pp. 167–76
The Outcasts (London: Macmillan, 1962)
The Queens of the Hive (London: Macmillan, 1962)
Taken Care Of (London: Hutchinson, 1965)
Osbert Sitwell:
The Winstonburg Line: Three Satires (London: Hendersons, 1919)
Argonaut and Juggernaut (London: Chatto & Windus, 1919)
At the House of Mrs. Kinfoot: Consisting of Four Satires (Kensington: Favil Press, 1921)
Who Killed Cock-Robin? Remarks on Poetry, on Its Criticism, and, as a Sad Warning, the Story of Eunuch Arden (London: Daniel, 1921)
Out of the Flame (London: Richards, 1923)
Triple Fugue (London: Richards, 1924)
(with Margaret Barton) Brighton (London: Faber & Faber, 1925)
(as O. S.) C. R. W. Nevinson (London: Benn, 1925)
Discursions on Travel, Art and Life (London: Richards, 1925)
Before the Bombardment (London: Duckworth, 1926)
England Reclaimed: A Book of Eclogues (London: Duckworth, 1927)
The People’s Album of London Statues (London: Duckworth, 1928)
Miss Mew (Stanford Dingley: Mill House Press, 1929)
The Man Who Lost Himself (London: Duckworth, 1929)
Dumb-Animal, and Other Stories (London: Duckworth, 1930)
Three-Quarter Length Portrait of Michael Arlen. With a Preface: The History of a Portrait, by the Author (London: Heinemann, 1930)
The Collected Satires and Poems of Osbert Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1931)
A Three-Quarter Length Portrait of the Viscountess Wimborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931)
(ed. with Margaret Barton) Victoriana: A Symposium of Victorian Wisdom (London: Duckworth, 1931)
Dickens (London: Chatto & Windus, 1932)
Miracle on Sinai: A Satirical Novel (London: Duckworth, 1933)
Penny Foolish: A Book of Tirades and Panegyrics (London: Macmillan, 1935)
Mrs Kimber (London: Macmillan, 1937)
Those Were the Days: Panorama with Figures (London: Macmillan, 1938)
Escape with Me! An Oriental Sketch-Book (London: Macmillan, 1939)
(ed.) Two Generations (London: Macmillan, 1940)
Open the Door! A Volume of Stories (London: Macmillan, 1941)
A Place of One’s Own (London: Macmillan, 1941)
(with Rubeigh James Minney) Gentle Caesar: A Play in Three Acts (London: Macmillan, 1942)
Selected Poems Old and New (London: Duckworth, 1943)
(ed. with Margaret Barton) Sober Truth: A Collection of Nineteenth-Century Episodes, Fantastic, Grotesque and Mysterious (London: MacDonald, 1944)
Left Hand, Right Hand! (London: Macmillan, 1945)
A Letter to My Son (London: Home & Van Thal, 1944)
Sing High! Sing Low! A Book of Essays (London: Macmillan, 1944)
The True Story of Dick Whittington: A Christmas Story for Cat-Lovers (London: Home & Van Thal, 1945)
The Scarlet Tree (London: Macmillan, 1946)
Alive-Alive Oh! and Other Stories (London: Pan, 1947)
Great Morning! (London: Macmillan, 1948)
The Novels of George Meredith and Some Notes on the English Novel (London: Oxford University Press, 1947)
(ed.) Walter Sickert, A Free House! or, The Artist as Craftsman (London: Macmillan, 1947)
Four Songs of the Italian Earth (Pawlet, VT: Banyan Press, 1948)
Laughter in the Next Room (London: Macmillan, 1948)
Death of a God, and Other Stories (London: Macmillan, 1949)
Demos the Emperor: A Secular Oratorio (London: Macmillan, 1949)
England Reclaimed, and Other Poems (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1949)
Introduction to the Catalogue of the Frick Collection: Published on the Founder’s Centenary, 19 December 1949 (New York: Ram Press, 1949)
Noble Essences: A Book of Characters (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1950)
Winters of Content, and Other Discursions on Mediterranean Art and Travel (London: Duckworth, 1950)
Wrack at Tidesend, a Book of Balnearics: Being the Second Volume of England Reclaimed (London: Macmillan, 1952)
Collected Stories (London: Duckworth, 1953)
The Four Continents: Being More Discursions on Travel, Art, and Life (London: Macmillan, 1954)
On the Continent: A Book of Inquilinics. Being the Third Volume of England Reclaimed (London: Macmillan, 1958)
Fee Fi Fo Fum! A Book of Fairy Stories (London: Macmillan, 1959)
A Place of One’s Own, and Other Stories (London: Icon, 1961)
Tales My Father Taught Me: An Evocation of Extravagant Episodes (London: Hutchinson, 1962)
Pound Wise (London: Hutchinson, 1963)
Queen Mary and Others (London: Joseph, 1974)
Sacheverell Sitwell:
The People’s Palace (Oxford: Blackwell, 1918)
The Hundred and One Harlequins (London: Grant Richards, 1922)
Doctor Donne and Gargantua: First Canto, with drawings by Wyndham Lewis (London: Favil Press, 1921)
All Summer in a Day: An Autobiographical Fantasia (London: Duckworth, 1926)
The Thirteenth Caesar, and Other Poems (London: Grant Richards, 1924)
Exalt the Eglantine, and Other Poems, decorated by Thomas Lowinsky (London: The Fleuron, 1926)
Southern Baroque Art (London: Grant Richards, 1924)
German Baroque Art (London: Duckworth, 1927)
The Cyder Feast, and Other Poems (London: Duckworth, 1927)
Two Poems, Ten Songs (London: Duckworth, 1929)
The Gothick North: The Visit of the Gypsies (London: Duckworth, 1929)
Doctor Donne & Gargantua: The First Six Cantos (London: G. Duckworth & Co.; New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930)
Beckford and Beckfordism: An Essay (London: Duckworth, 1930)
Far from My Home, Stories: Long and Short (London: Duckworth, 1931)
Spanish Baroque Art, with Buildings in Portugal, Mexico and Other Colonies (London: Duckworth, 1931)
Mozart (London: Peter Davis, 1932)
Canons of Giant Art: Twenty Torsos in Heroic Landscapes (London: Faber & Faber, 1933)
Touching the Orient: Six Sketches (London: Duckworth, 1934)
Liszt (London: Faber & Faber, 1934)
Scarlatti (London: Faber & Faber, 1935)
A Background for Domenico Scarlatti, 1685–1757 (London: Faber & Faber, 1935)
Dance of the Quick and the Dead: An Entertainment of the Imagination (London: Faber & Faber, 1936)
Collected Poems, introductory essay by Edith Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1936)
Conversation Pieces: A Survey of English Domestic Portraits and their Painters (London: Batsford, 1936)
Narrative Pictures (London: Batsford, 1937)
Old Fashioned Flowers (London: Country Life, 1939)
Poltergeists: An Introduction and Examination Followed by Chosen Instances (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)
Sacred and Profane Love (London: Faber & Faber, 1940)
Mauretania: Warrior, Man and Woman (London: Duckworth, 1940)
The Homing of the Winds, and Other Passages in Prose (London: Faber & Faber, 1942)
Splendours and Miseries (London: Faber & Faber, 1943)
British Architecture and Craftsmen: A Survey of Taste, Design, and Style during Three Centuries, 1600 to 1830 (London: Batsford, 1945)
The Hunters and Hunted (London: Macmillan, 1947)
Selected Poems, preface by Osbert Sitwell (London: Duckworth, 1948)
Morning, Noon and Night in London (London: Macmillan, 1948)
The Netherlands (London: Batsford, 1948)
Spain (London: Batsford, 1950)
Cupid and the Jacaranda (London: Macmillan & Co., 1952)
Truffle Hunt (London: Robert Hale, 1953)
(with Handasyde Buchanan and James Fisher) Fine Bird Books, 1700–1900 (London: Collins, 1953)
Portugal and Madeira (London: Batsford, 1954)
(with Wilfrid Blunt) Great Flower Books, 1700–1900, ed. by P. W. Synge (London: Collins, 1955)
Denmark (London: Batsford, 1956)
Arabesque and Honeycomb (London: Robert Hale, 1957)
Malta, illustrated by Tony Armstrong Jones (London: Batsford, 1958)
Bridge of the Brocade Sash: Travels and Observations in Japan (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1959)
Austria, with photographs by Toni Schneiders (London: Thames & Hudson, 1959)
Journey to the Ends of Time (London: Cassell, 1959)
Golden Wall and Mirador: From England to Peru (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1961)
The Red Chapels of Banteai, and Temples in Cambodia, India, Siam, and Nepal (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962)
To Henry Woodward (London: Covent Garden Press, 1972)
Tropicalia (Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1972)
Agamemnon’s Tomb (Edinburgh: Tragara Press, 1972)
The Archipelago of Daffodils (Brackley: Smart & Co., 1972)
Auricula Theatre (Brackley: Smart & Co., 1972)
For Want of a Golden City (London: Day, 1973)
Brother and Sister: A Ballad of the Paralelo (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)
Diptycha Musica: Living Dangerously (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)
The Octogenarian (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)
Nine Ballads; [and] Four More Lilies (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)
Dodecameron: A Self Portrait in Twelve Poems with an Apologia in Prose (Daventry: M. Battison, 1977)
An Indian Summer: 100 Recent Poems (London: Macmillan, 1982)
Catalysts in Collusion: A Book of Catalysts (Badby: M. Battison, 1980)
Hortus Sitwellianus, with line illustrations by Meriel Edmunds (Wilton, Salisbury: M. Russell, 1984)
Collaborations:
Sitwell, Edith and Sitwell, Osbert, Twentieth-Century Harlequinade and Other Poems (Oxford: Blackwell, 1916)
Sitwell, Edith, Sitwell, Osbert and Sitwell, Sacheverell, Poor Young People (London: Fleuron, 1925)
Sitwell, Osbert and Sitwell, Sacheverell, All at Sea: A Social Tragedy in Three Acts for First-Class Passengers Only (London: Duckworth, 1927)
Sitwell, Edith, Sitwell, Osbert and Sitwell, Sacheverell, Trio: Dissertations on Some Aspects of National Genius, Delivered as the Northcliffe Lectures at the University of London in 1937 (London: Macmillan, 1938; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970)
Bradford, Sarah, et al., The Sitwells and the Arts of the 1920s and 1930s, 2nd edn (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996)
Cevasco, G. A., The Sitwells: Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell (Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers, 1987)
Elborn, Geoffrey, Edith Sitwell: A Biography (London: Sheldon, 1981)
Fifoot, Richard, A Bibliography of Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell, rev. edn (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1971)
Glendinning, Victoria, Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn among Lions (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981)
James, C. L. R., ‘Bloomsbury: An Encounter with Edith Sitwell’, in The C.L.R. James Reader, ed. by Anna Grimshaw (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 43–8
Lehmann, John, A Nest of Tigers: The Sitwells in Their Times (London: Macmillan, 1968)
Meegroz, R. L., The Three Sitwells: A Biographical and Critical Study (London: Richards Press, 1927)
Nandakumar, Prema, ‘Edith Sitwell: 1887–1964’ (obituary), Aryan Path 36.11 (November 1965), pp. 501–8
Pearson, John, Façades: Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell (London: Macmillan, 1978)
Salter, Elizabeth Fulton, The Last Years of a Rebel: A Memoir of Edith Sitwell (London: Bodley Head, 1967)
Letters, Bodleian Library, Oxford
MS and letters, British Library, St Pancras
Osbert Sitwell, correspondence and compositions, MS Eng 1293, Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
Letters from Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji Collection
Letters, King's College Archive Centre, Cambridge
Letters, London Library
The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Edith Sitwell Papers, 1932–1964 (bulk 1959–1962), Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
Correspondence and literary papers, Historical Manuscripts Commission, National Register of Archives
Volume of manuscript poems by Edith Sitwell (1887–1964), Dept of Manuscripts and Special Collections, University of Nottingham
Letters and literary MSS, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City
Edith Sitwell Letters, University of Sussex Special Collections
Dame Edith Sitwell Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
Thomas Balston: Papers of the Sitwells, 1924–1960, Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, Washington
Dame Edith Sitwell Fonds (F0408), Osbert Sitwell Fonds (F0409), and Sacheverell Sitwell Fonds (F0410), York University, Toronto
Image credit
Blue plaque to the Sitwell family on Wood End by Christopher Hall, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en via Wikimedia Commons
