Letters from Ethel Smyth put online

The English composer Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) came to Leipzig in 1877 to study music at the local conservatory. "Leipzig!!! ... HERE I AM", was the title of one of the first of over 50 letters she wrote to her mother during this time. In them, she gives an impressive account of the cultural differences to her home country that are noticeable in everyday life, her training at the Leipzig Conservatory and also of her diverse activities and encounters in Leipzig's social life.

In 2014, the Leipzig University of Music and Theatre (HMT) succeeded in acquiring the 57 letters offered by a London antiquarian bookshop through a sponsorship campaign. The individual documents were then made accessible in the Kalliope manuscript portal. Just in time for the 75th anniversary of the death of the composer, writer and women's rights activist Ethel Smyth, the letters are now also available online.

The digital copies can be found with other objects from the digital HMT collection on the portal Saxony.digital and can be used under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. The digitization, presentation and long-term archiving of the collection was made possible by the State Digitization Programme for Science and Culture of the Free State of Saxony, coordinated by the SLUB Dresden.