The Sitwells

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The Sitwells were three siblings—Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverell Sitwell—from Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Their family home was Renishaw Hall. In London, roughly 1916 to 1930, they formed a famous literary and artistic circle. A standout moment was Edith’s Façade, a collaboration with composer William Walton, first performed in 1923.

All three wrote, and for a time their circle rivaled Bloomsbury in fame, though some people saw them as chasing publicity rather than being serious artists. Their first project was the Wheels anthologies, started in 1916. These works were seen as a counter to Edward Marsh’s Georgian Poetry and as light society verse. They didn’t quite launch the next generation of poets the way Imagist or Modernist anthologies did, but they did include writers such as Nancy Cunard and Aldous Huxley.

They had a family coat of arms with the motto Ne cede malis (Yield not to misfortune).

Wood End, the Sitwells’ former home in Scarborough, has been redeveloped into a creative industries centre offering artist workspace and learning spaces. Weston Hall in Northamptonshire, also owned by the family, was sold in 2021. A large collection of the Sitwells’ papers is held at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin.