The Sitwells

The Sitwells (Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, Sacheverell Sitwell) were three siblings, who formed an identifiable literary and artistic clique around themselves in London in the period roughly 1916 to 1930. This was marked by some well-publicised events, the most prominent of which was probably Edith's "Façade" with music by William Walton, with its public debut in 1923. All three Sitwells wrote; for a while their circle was considered by some to rival Bloomsbury, though others dismissed them as attention-seekers rather than serious artists.

"Wheels" anthologies

The first Sitwell venture was the series of "Wheels" anthologies produced from 1916. These were seen either as a counterweight to the contemporary Edward Marsh "Georgian Poetry" anthologies, or as light 'society verse' collections. They did not really match the Imagist anthologies of the same years, or the modernist wing, in terms of finding poets with important careers ahead of them, but included both Nancy Cunard and Aldous Huxley.

columns
col1=;Wheels 1916
*Nancy Cunard
*Arnold James
*V. T. Perowne
*Helen Rootham
*Edith Sitwell
*Osbert Sitwell
*Sacheverell Sitwell
*E. W. Tennant
*Iris Tree

;Wheels 1917
*Aldous Huxley
*Arnold James
*Helen Rootham
*Edith Sitwell
*Osbert Sitwell
*Sacheverell Sitwell
*E. W. Tennant
*Iris Tree
*Sherard Vines
col2=;Wheels 1918
*Álvaro Guevara
*Aldous Huxley
*Arnold James
*Edith Sitwell
*Osbert Sitwell
*Sacheverell Sitwell
*Iris Tree
*Sherard Vines

;Wheels 1919
*Aldous Huxley
*Arnold James
*Wilfred Owen
*Francesco Quevedo
*Edith Sitwell
*Osbert Sitwell
*Sacheverell Sitwell
*Iris Tree
*Sherard Vines
col3=;Wheels 1920
*John J. Adams
*Leah McTavish Cohen
*Geoffrey Cookson
*Aldous Huxley
*Alan Porter
*William Kean Seymour
*Edith Sitwell
*Osbert Sitwell
*Sacheverell Sitwell
*Sherard Vines

;Wheels 1921
*H. R. Barber
*Aldous Huxley
*Charles Orange
*Alan Porter
*Augustine Rivers
*Paul Selver
*Edith Sitwell
*Osbert Sitwell
*Sacheverell Sitwell
*Sherard Vines

Legacy

Wood End, the former family home of the Sitwells in Scarborough has been redeveloped into a "creative industries centre" providing artists' workspace as well as administrative and learning spaces. [ [http://www.scarboroughmuseums.org.uk/wood_end.html Scarborough Museums site] ]

There is a coffee shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, named Sitwell's Coffee House in honour of Edith Sitwell.

A large collection of the Sitwells' papers reside at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas, Austin. [ [http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/search?text-join=and&text=&text-exclude=&text-prox=&sectionType=&title=&creator=sitwell&unitdate= the Sitwell Collections] at the HRC]

A poem by Ogden Nash contains a reference to the family: "How many miles to Babylon? / Love-in-a-mist and Bovril. / Are there more Sitwells than one? / Oh yes, there are Sacheverell."

References

Further reading

*"The Sitwells"—published by the National Portrait Gallery to accompany the exhibition "The Sitwells and the arts of the 1920s and 1930s"; hardback ISBN 1-85514-140-X; paperback ISBN 1-85514-141-8