In her short life Amy Levy was an extraordinarily prolific poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. With the exception of two publications as a teenager, Levy wrote all of her works within a period of ten years. Most of her writing is characterized by alternations of darkness and light, pessimism and optimism. There is little joy in her poetry, but there are frequent touches of wry humor and idealism. Edward Wagenknecht believes that "Only the disappointed idealist can suffer such disillusionment as consumes her; the 'realist' has never expected very much." Weltschmerz--a word that Levy uses in her 1883 essay "James Thomson: A Minor Poet" (republished in The Complete Novels and Selected Writings of Amy Levy, 1861-1889, 1993) to describe Thomson's deeply pessimistic and alienated style and mood--can also be used to characterize her poetry. At the age of twenty-seven, a week after correcting the proofs of her final volume...