SOURCE: "Amy Levy," in Daughters of the Covenant: Portraits of Six Jewish Women, Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1983, pp. 55-93.

In the following essay, Wagenknecht provides a survey of Levy's life and career, characterizing her as "a child, albeit a belated, disappointed, and disillusioned child, of the Romantic Age."

Like many Americans, I first encountered the name of Amy Levy in the fine poem "Broken Music" Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote about her after her tragic death.

A note 
 All out of tune in this world's instrument.
  AMY LEVY

I know not in what fashion she was made,
 Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
  Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade 
 On wan or rosy cheek.

I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes
  Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light
 As linger in the drift of London skies
  Ere twilight turns to...