Ethel Voynich

According to the British journalist Robin Bruce Lockhart, Sidney Reilly – a Russian-born operative employed by the émigré intelligence network of Scotland Yard's Special Branch – met Ethel Voynich in London in 1895. Lockhart, whose father, R.H. Bruce Lockhart knew Reilly, claims that Reilly and Voynich had a sexual liaison and voyaged to Italy together. During their romance Reilly is said to have bared his soul and revealed to her the story of his espionage activities. After their brief affair, Voynich published The Gadfly, whose central character Arthur Burton was based on Reilly.[7] In 2004, writer Andrew Cook suggested that Reilly may have been reporting on Voynich and her political activities to William Melville of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch.[8] In 2016, new evidence surfaced from archived communication between Anne Fremantle, who attempted a biography of Ethel Voynich, and a relative of Ethel's on the Hinton side. The evidence demonstrates that a liaison of some sort took place between Reilly and her in Florence, 1895.[9]

She is most famous for her first novel The Gadfly, first published in 1897 in the United States (June) and Britain (September), about the struggles of an international revolutionary in Italy who was loosely based on the figure of Giuseppe Mazzini. This novel was very popular in the Soviet Union and was the top bestseller and compulsory reading there, where it was seen as ideologically useful; for similar reasons, the novel has been popular in the People's Republic of China as well. By the time of Voynich's death The Gadfly had sold an estimated 2,500,000 copies in the Soviet Union and had been made into two Russian movies, first in 1928 in Soviet Georgia (Krazana) and then again in 1955.[10]

Historian Mark Mazower describes The Gadfly as ‘a radical fin de siècle English novel’ translated into Yiddish by his grandfather, Max Mazower, being published in 1907 in Vilna, then part of the Russian Empire, now Vilnius, Lithuania. Its dramatic story serves as an allegory for the struggle for liberty in Russia. Not only did it circulate widely among socialists in Russia, it appealed enormously to people of progressive ideas elsewhere with soaring popularity in Britain towards the end of the First World War. Sidney Reilly, the famous British “Ace of Spies” is said to have either modelled himself on or served as a model for Voynich's hero. Reilly, in turn, was used by Ian Fleming as a model for James Bond, the most famous fictional spy of the Cold War.[11]

The 1955 film of the novel, by the Soviet director Aleksandr Fajntsimmer is noted for the fact that composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the score (see The Gadfly Suite). Along with some other excerpts, the Romance movement has since become very popular. Shostakovich's Gadfly theme was also used in the 1980s, in the BBC TV series Reilly, Ace of Spies. In 1980 the novel was adapted again as a TV miniseries The Gadfly, featuring Sergei Bondarchuk as Father Montanelli. Various other adaptations exist, including at least three operas and two ballets.

Voynich's other four novels never achieved the same success as The Gadfly, but two of them extended its narrative. An Interrupted Friendship (1910) elaborates on The Gadfly's protagonist's backstory,[6] and Put Off Thy Shoes (1945), Voynich's last novel, further focuses on the life of the protagonist's family and ancestors; a "lengthy, multi-generational chronicle" set in the 18th century.[4]

Her second novel, Jack Raymond (1901), was quickly followed by her third, Olive Latham (1904). Nearly a decade later, Voynich took a hiatus from writing and focused on music.[12]

Voynich began composing music around 1910. She joined the Society of Women Musicians during World War I. After she and her husband moved to New York, she devoted herself much more to music, creating many adaptations and transcriptions of existing works. In 1931 she published an edited volume of Chopin's letters.[13] From 1933 to 1943 she worked at the Pius X School of Liturgical Music in Manhattan. While there she composed a number of cantatas and other works that were performed at the college, including Babylon, Jerusalem, Epitaph in Ballad Form and The Submerged City. She also researched the history of music, compiling detailed commentaries on music of various eras. Most of her music remains unpublished and is held at the Library of Congress.[4] Recent evaluation in 2005 of the cantata Babylon by an eminent English composer was not very favourable. 'The general impression is of amateurism and gaucheness'.[13]