Levy (1861-89) was a British essayist, poet and novelist who was the first Jewish woman at Cambridge University. She was a pioneering student at Newnham College, Cambridge who held strong feminist views although she left before her final year without taking her exams. She went on to become what was known as a "New Woman," moving in literary and politically activist circles in London in the 1880s. While travelling in Florence in 1886 she met Vernon Lee, a fiction writer and literary theorist six years her senior, and fell in love with her. Both women went on to explore the themes of sapphic love in their work. Published in 1888, this was Levy's first novel and is regarded as an early "New Woman" work, depicting the experiences of four sisters running a business in London in that decade.