The following is a working bibliography of scholarship on the life and music of Dame Ethel Smyth, including Smyth’s memoirs and published essays. Sources are listed alphabetically. Any errors or omissions are my own. I am currently updating this page – if you know of a source that should be listed here, please contact us!

— Amy Zigler, PhD

Anderson, Gwen. Ethel Smyth: The Burning Rose: A Brief Biography. London: Cecil Woolf Publishers, 1997.

Bartsch, Cornelia. “’(Anti)Primitivismus’? Ethel Smyth’s ‘Grosse Fuge’ (1913).” MusikTheorie 29, no. 4 (2014): 317–32.

Bernstein, Jane A. “’Shout, Shout, Up with Your Song!’ Dame Ethel Smyth and the Changing Role of the British Woman Composer.” In Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1900, ed. by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, 304-322. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985.

Broad, Leah. Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World. Faber & Faber, 2023.

Citron, Marcia J. “Dr. Marcia J. Citron on The Wreckers at Houston Grand Opera.” Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy. https://wophil.org/marcia-j-citron-wreckers-houston/?doing_wp_cron=1672092456.1806221008300781250000

Clements, Elicia. “Virginia Woolf, Ethel Smyth, and Music: Listening as a Productive Mode of Social Interaction.” College Literature 32, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 51-71.

Collis, Louise. Impetuous Heart: The Story of Ethel Smyth. London: William Kimber & Co. Limited, 1984.

Dale, Kathleen. “Dame Ethel Smyth,” Music & Letters 25, no. 4 (1944): 191-194.

_____. “Ethel Smyth’s Prentice Works.” Music & Letters 30, no. 4 (1949): 329-336.

D’Silva, Beverley. “Ethel Smyth: An Extraordinary ‘Lost’ Opera Composer.” BBC Culture Online. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220720-ethel-smyththe-rebel-composer-erased-from-history

Farny, Natasha. “‘Worthy of the Canon’: Romantic Cello Sonatas by Women.” College Music Symposium 61, no. 2 (Fall 2021): 68-82.

Franca, John. “An Ethel Smyth discovery.” The Strad 91, no. 1090 (1981): 718-19.

Fuller, Sophie. “Smyth, Dame Ethel (Mary).” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 23 (2001): 591-594.

_____. “Women Composers During the British Musical Renaissance, 1880-1918.” Ph. D. diss., King’s College, University of London, 1998.

Fuller-Maitland, J.A. “Smyth, (Dame) Ethel (Mary).” The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 7 (1954): 860-863.

Gates, Eugene. “Damned If You Do and Damned If You Don’t: Sexual Aesthetics and the Music of Dame Ethel Smyth.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 31, no. 1 (University of Illinois, Spring 1997): 63-71.

_____. “The Woman Composer Question: Four Case Studies from the Romantic Era.” Ed. D. diss., University of Toronto, 1992.

Gibbon, Rachel. “The Early Operas of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944): Geneses, Performance, Structure,” 2 vols. PhD diss., University of Manchester, 2005.

Gillett, Paula. Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: “Encroaching on All Man’s Privileges.” New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000.

Gisbrecht, Nancy. “An Examination of the Operatic Environment in Which Ethel Smyth Composed and Its Effect On Her Career.” M.A. Thesis, University of South Carolina, 1980.

Halstead, Jill. The Woman Composer: Creativity and the Gendered Politics of Musical Compositions. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1997.

Hardy, Lisa. The British Piano Sonata, 1870-1945. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2001.

Harris, Amanda. “Recomposing Her History: the Memoirs and Diaries of Ethel Smyth.” Life Writing 8, no. 4 (2011): 421-431.

_____. “The Smyth-Brewster Correspondence: A Fresh Look at the Hidden Romantic World of Ethel Smyth.” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 14, no. 1 (2010): 72-94.

Hoffmann, Marleen. “’It Seemed to Me My First Duty to Signify I Was One of the Fighters’: Ethel Smyth’s Two Years of Suffrage Activities and Her Suffrage Music.” In Women’s Suffrage in Word, Image, Music, Stage and Screen: The Making of a Movement, ed. by Christopher Wiley and Lucy Ella Rose. Routledge, 2021.

Hughes, Jennifer Gwynn. “Sapphonic Listening: Ethel Smyth’s String Quartet in E minor.” M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1995.

Hull, Robin. “Dame Ethel Smyth.” Tempo 7 (1944): 12.

Hurd Michael, “Smyth, Dame Ethel (Mary),” The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 17 (1980): 425-26.

Hyde, Derek. New-found Voices: Women in Nineteenth-century English Music. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1998.

Jezic, Diane Peacock. Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found, foreword by Elizabeth Wood. New York: The Feminist Press, 1988.

 Johannes Brahms: The Herzogenberg Correspondence, ed. by Max Kalbeck and trans. by Hannah Bryant. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1909.

Johnson, Carl. “Ethel Smyth: The Only Woman Composer Ever to be Heard at the Met. American Music Teacher 31 (1981): 14-17.

Keays, Mary Lee. “Tooting Her Own Horn: Dame Ethel Smyth’s Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano.” DMA diss., University of California – Los Angeles, 2001.

Lee, Ean-Ju. “A Stylistic Analysis of Ethel Smyth’s Sonata Cycle, Works for Piano, and Chamber Music with Piano.” DMA diss., University of Houston, 2008.

Lumsden, Rachel. “Ethel Smyth, The Boatswain’s Mate (1913-1913): A Wrinkle? Gender and Motive in Ethel Smyth’s The Boatswain’s Mate.” Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers, edited by Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (Oxford University Press, 2022).

_____. “’The Music Between Us’: Ethel Smyth, Emmeline Pankhurst, and ‘Possession.’” Feminist Studies 41, no. 2 (2015): 335-370.

Marcus, Jane. “Storming the Toolshed.” Feminist Theory 7/3 (Spring 1982): 622-640.

Mercier, Anita and Susan Pickett. “Ethel Smyth: String Quartet in E minor (1912).” In Women Composers: Music Through the Ages, Vol. 8: Large and Small Ensembles, ed. by Sylvia Glickman and Martha F. Schleifer, 303-307. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2006.

Millington, Hannah. “’1910’: Ethel Smyth’s Unsung Suffrage Song.” The Musicology Review 10 (November 2021): 55-76.

_____. “‘An Individual, not an Echo’: Identity and Expression in the Early Works of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944).” PhD diss., Dublin City University, 2024.

Nelson, Trevor. “The Dissident Dame: Alternative Feminist Methodologies and the Music of Ethel Smyth.” MA thesis, Michigan State University, 2016.

Neules-Bates, Carol, ed. Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings From the Middle Ages to the Present. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982.

O’Toole, Sean. “The Letters of Ethel Smyth to Edith Somerville, 1918-1921: A Chronicle of Desire.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 29, no. 2 (2020): 253-280.

Robinson, Suzanne. “Smyth the Anarchist: Fin-de-siècle Radicalism in The Wreckers.” Cambridge Opera Journal 20, no. 2 (July 2008): 149-179.

St. John, Christopher. Ethel Smyth: A Biography. London: Longmans, 1959. With appendices by Edward Sackville-West, Vita Sackville-West, and Kathleen Dale.

Schau, Kate. “‘This is No Leave-Taking’: Autobiography and Legacy in Ethel Smyth’s The Prison.” Master’s thesis, University of Oregon, 2022.

Seddon, Laura. British Women Composers and Instrumental Chamber Music in the Early Twentieth Century. London: Ashgate, 2013.

Shannon, Mary. “Dame Ethel Smyth and The Prison: Gender, Sexuality and the ‘Bonds of Self.'” Honors thesis, William and Mary College, 2021.

Smyth, Ethel. Beecham and Pharaoh. London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1935.

 _____. Female Pipings in Eden. London: P. Davies Ltd., 1934.

 _____. A Final Burning of Boats. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928.

 _____. As Time Went On … London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936.

_____. Impressions That Remained, vols. I and II. London: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd., 1919. Reprint New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.

_____. Inordinate (?) Affection: A Story for Dog Lovers. Cresset Press, 1936.

_____. Maurice Baring. London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1938.

_____. The Memoirs of Ethel Smyth. Abridged and introduced by Ronald Crichton, with a chronological listing of works compiled by Jory Bennett. New York: Viking Press, 1987.

_____. Streaks of Life. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1921.

_____. A Three-Legged Tour in Greece. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1927.

_____. What Happened Next. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940.

Solie, Ruth A., ed. Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Tovey, Donald Francis. Essays in Musical Analysis: Vol. V, Vocal Music. London: Oxford University Press, 1937.

Vysin, Elizabeth. “The Cello Sonatas of Dame Ethel Smyth: A Musical Analysis with Social and Feminist Commentary.” DMA diss., The Hartt School, University of Hartford, 2023.

Wiley, Christopher. “Ethel Smyth, Music and the Suffragette Movement: Reconsidering The Boatswain’s Mate as Feminist Opera.” In Women’s Suffrage in Word, Image, Music, Stage and Screen: The Making of a Movement, ed. by Christopher Wiley and Lucy Ella Rose.  Routledge, 2021.

_____. “Ethel Smyth, Suffrage, and Surrey: From Frimley Green to Hook Heath, Woking.” Women’s History: The Journal of the Women’s History Network, Special Issue: 1918-2018 2, no. 11 (2018): 11-18.

_____. “A Fresh Start and Two (More) Portraits: Theatrical Shows on the Life and Work of Ethel Smyth for 2018.” Women’s History: The Journal of the Women’s History Network, Special Issue: 1918-2018 2, no. 11 (2018): 39-40.  

_____. “Music and Literature: Ethel Smyth, Virginia Woolf, and ‘the First Woman to Write an Opera.’” The Musical Quarterly 96 (2013): 263-95.

_____. “The Statue of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) in Dukes Plaza, Woking.” Women’s History Review (2022): 1-11.

_____. “’When a Woman Speaks the Truth About Her Body’: Ethel Smyth, Virginia Woolf, and the Challenges of Lesbian Auto/Biography.” Music & Letters 85 (2004): 388-414.

Wilson, Miranda. Notes for Cellists: A Guide to the Repertoire. Oxford University Press, 2024.

Wood, Elizabeth. “Gender and Genre in Ethel Smyth’s Operas.” In The Musical Woman, Vol. 3, ed. by Zaimont, Overhauser, and Gottlieb. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991.

______. “Lesbian Fugue: Ethel Smyth’s Contrapuntal Arts.” Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. by Ruth A. Solie. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993.

_____. “The Lesbian in the Opera: Desire Unmasked in Smyth’s Fantasio and Fete Galante.” En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera, ed. by Corrine E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith (Columbia University Press, 1995), 285-305.

______. “On Deafness and Musical Creativity: The Case of Ethel Smyth.” The Musical Quarterly, 92 (2009): 33-69.

______. “Performing Rights: A Sonography of Women’s Suffrage.” The Musical Quarterly, 79, no. 4 (1995): 606-643.

______. “Sapphonics.” In Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, ed. by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary Thomas. New York: Routledge Press, 1994.

_____. The Story of Two English Rebels, Vernon Lee and Ethel Smyth. Uploaded to YouTube by NYU Florence, March 12, 2018. https://youtu.be/xv6-AmItedc

_____. “Women, Music, and Ethel Smyth: A Pathway in the Politics of Music.” The Massachusetts Review 24, no.  1 (1983): 125-139.

Yatsyuk, Sofia. “Women Composers and Their Critics in the Era of First-Wave Feminism: Gender and the Classical Music Canon in Britain, 1850-1950.” DMA diss., McGill University, 2024.

Zigler, Amy. “Four Romantic Chamber Works by Ethel Smyth (1858-1944).” Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music 14, no. 1 (2008): 8-14.

_____. “‘Perhaps what men call a sin…’: An Examination of Ethel Smyth’s The Prison.” In Women Composers in New Perspectives, 1800-1950: Genres, Contexts, and Repertoire, ed. by Mariateresa Storino and Susan Wollenberg, 213-234. Turnhout: Brepols, 2023.

_____. Review of Ethel Smyth’s Serenade in D major for Orchestra, edited by John L. Snyder (A-R Editions, 2021), Nineteenth-Century Music Review (published online 6 September 2022). https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S1479409822000325.

_____. Selected Chamber Works of Dame Ethel Smyth. PhD diss., University of Florida, 2009.

_____. “’What a Splendid Chance Missed!’: Dame Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald at the Met.” The Opera Journal 54, no. 2 (December 2021): 109-163.

_____. “The Wreckers Storms Houston!” Women’s Philharmonic Advocacy, https://wophil.org/the-wreckers-storms-houston/

_____. “‘You and I Will Be Like the Monk Dante Meets in Hell’: Literary References and Autobiography in Ethel Smyth’s Sonata in A Minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 7 (1887).” In Nineteenth-Century Programme Music: Creation, Negotiations, Reception, ed. by Jonathan Kregor, 233-255. Turnhout: Brepols, 2018.