Leonora Speyer, Lady Speyer (née von Stosch; 7 November 1872 – 10 February 1956), was an American poet and violinist.

Life

Sir Edgar & Lady Leonora Speyer circa 1921

She was born in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, the daughter of Count Ferdinand von Stosch of Mantze in Silesia, who fought for the Union, and Julia Schayer, who was a writer. She studied music in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, and

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, and played the violin professionally under the batons of

Arthur Nikisch Arthur Nikisch (12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London, Leipzig and—most importantly—Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of B ...

and

Anton Seidl Anton Seidl (7 May 185028 March 1898) was a famous Hungarian Wagner conductor, best known for his association with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and the New York Philharmonic. Biography He was born in Pest, Austria-Hungary, where ...

, among others. She first married Louis Meredith Howland in 1894, but they divorced in Paris in 1902. She then married banker

Edgar Speyer Sir Edgar Speyer, 1st Baronet (7 September 1862 – 16 February 1932) was an American-born financier and philanthropist. Barker 2004. He became a British subject in 1892 and was chairman of Speyer Brothers, the British branch of the Speyer fami ...

(later Sir Edgar), of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, where the couple lived until 1915. Sir Edgar had German ancestry and following anti-German attacks on him that year, they moved to the United States and took up residence in New York, where Speyer began writing poetry. She won the

1927 Pulitzer Prize The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1927. Journalism awards *Public Service: **''Canton Daily News'', for its brave, patriotic and effective fight for the ending of a vicious state of affairs brought about by collusion between city authoritie ...

for

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

for her book of poetry ''Fiddler's Farewell''. She had four daughters: Enid Howland with her first husband and Pamela, Leonora, and Vivien Claire Speyer with her second husband.

Awards

Golden Rose Award The Golden Rose Award, one of America’s oldest literary prizes, was inaugurated in 1919. The rose was modeled after the Gold Rose which is now in the Cluny Museum in Paris. ThNew England Poetry Clubawards the Rose annually for American poetry. ...

* Pulitzer Prize

Selected works

"April on the Battlefields", ''The Second Book of Modern Verse'' (1919). about.com
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20091022183953/http://geocities.com/~bblair/bav22_5.htm "Suddenly", ''Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920'', Bartleby.combr>"Song", ''Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920'', Bartleby.com
*''Oberammergau,'' etched, printed and bound by Bernhardt Wall, 1922, 50 copies plus 3 Etcher's Copies * *''American Poets, An Anthology Of Contemporary Verse'' (1923) *''Fiddler's Farewell'' (1926) *''Slow Wall; poems, new and selected'' (1939) *''Slow wall; poems, together with Nor without music'' (1944)

Translation

Notes

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Speyer, Leonora 1872 births 1956 deaths Musicians from Washington, D.C. American women poets Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winners American classical violinists Women classical violinists Poets from Washington, D.C. American people of Silesian descent 20th-century American poets 20th-century classical violinists 20th-century American women writers 20th-century women musicians 20th-century American violinists