"Ethel Smyth," writes Edward Sackville-West, "was, by any standard, among the greatest women this country has produced." She was one of the very few women composers of international repute, she was an author of great distinction, and she played a leading part in the struggle for women's rights. But, with her extraordinary vitality and her numerous and passionate friendships and antipathies, she was--perhaps above all--"a character" of exciting originality. This life-story follows on the centenary of her birth, and the author, who knew Ethel Smyth personally, has been fortunate in being able to draw on her life-long and voluminous correspondence. The author presents a truly engrossing account of the composer's early musical career, her studies at Leipzig, her friendships with Brahms and Tchaikovsky, her strange relationship with the philosopher Henry Brewster, and her subsequent long struggle for recognition. The book not only re-creates with vigor the character of this unusual and gifted woman, but is rich in unpublished letters and fascinating and humorous anecdotes from the circles in which she moved--her friendships, for instance, with the Empress Eugenie, Maurice Baring, Sir Thomas Beecham, Mrs. Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf.