The Diary of a Plain Girl

Amy Levy was born in London, England in 1861, the second of seven in a fairly wealthy Anglo-Jewish family. The children of the family read and participated in secular literary activities becoming firmly integrated into Victorian life. Amy was educated at Brighton High School, Brighton, and studied at Newnham College, Cambridge; she was the first Jewish student when she arrived in 1879, but left after four terms. But her writing career was to begin early; her poem "Ida Grey" appearing when she was only fourteen. Her stories "Cohen of Trinity" and "Wise in Their Generation," were published by Oscar Wilde in his magazine “Women's World," and are considered among her best. Her first novel Romance of a Shop, written in 1888 is based on four sisters who experience the pleasures and hardships of running a business in London during the 1880s. This was followed by Reuben Sachs (also 1888) and concerned with Jewish identity and mores in the England of her time and therefore somewhat controversia