Poet and novelist, born in Hull, NE England, UK. Educated in London, she worked in publishing, then began to write herself. In 1935 she took her first collection of poems to a publisher, who rejected them and advised her to try a novel. The result was Novel on Yellow Paper (1936), a largely autobiographical monologue in a humorous conversational style. Her first book of poetry, A Good Time Was Had By All, was published in 1937, and she gradually acquired a reputation as an eccentrically humorous poet on serious themes. Later books include Not Waving but Drowning (1957), The Frog Prince (1966), and Scorpion (1972).
Stevie Smith (September 20, 1902–March 7, 1971) was a British poet and novelist.
Life
Born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith, she was christened Florence Margaret, but always called Peggy by the family.
Later, when her mother became ill, her aunt Lion came to live with them. She spent the remainder of her life with her aunt, and worked as private secretary to Sir Neville Pearson with Sir George Newnes at Newnes Publishing Company in London from 1923 to 1953. After Smith's death, her last collection, Scorpion and other Poems was published posthumously in 1972, and the Collected Poems in 1975. Three novels were republished, and there was a successful play based on her life, Stevie, written by Hugh Whitemore.
Career
She wrote three novels, the first of which, A Novel on Yellow Paper, was published in 1936. All her novels are lightly fictionalised accounts of her own life, which got her into trouble at times as people recognised themselves. Stevie said that two of the male characters in her last book are different aspects of George Orwell, who was close to Smith; "Stevie Smith often uses the word 'peculiar' and it is the best word to describe her effects" (Hermione Lee).
Bibliography
Fiction
Novel on Yellow Paper (Cape, 1936)Smith's first novel is structured as the random typings of a bored secretary, Pompey. She plays word games, retells stories from classical and popular culture, remembers events from her childhood, gossips about her friends and describes her family, particularly her beloved Aunt.
As with all Smith's novels, there is an early scene where the heroine expresses feelings and beliefs which she will later feel significant, although ambiguous, regret for. In Novel on Yellow Paper that belief is anti-Semitism, where she feels elation at being the "only Goy" at a Jewish party. This apparently throwaway scene acts as a timebomb, which detonates at the centre of the novel when Pompey visits Germany as the Nazis are gaining power.
The German scenes are a standout in the novel, but perhaps equally powerful is her dissection of failed love. The final section of the novel describes with unusual clarity the intense pain of her break-up with Freddy.
Over the Frontier (Cape 1938)Smith herself dismissed her second novel as a failed experiment, but its attempt to parody popular genre fiction in order to explore profound political issues now seems to predate post-modern fiction.
After the failure of her relation with Freddy, Pompey suffers a breakdown and is sent to Schloss Tillson in Germany to recuperate. At this point the novel changes style radically, as Pompey becomes part of an adventure/spy yarn in the style of John Buchan or Dornford Yates. As the novel becomes increasingly dreamlike, Pompey crosses over the frontier to become a spy and soldier. The vision Smith offers is a bleak one: "Power and cruelty are the strengths of our lives, and only in their weakness is there love."
The Holiday (Chapman and Hall, 1949)Smith's final novel is her own favourite, and most fully realised.
The Holiday describes a series of hopeless relationships. Celia's other cousin Tom is in love with her, Basil is love with Tom, Tom is estranged from his father, Celia's beloved Uncle Heber, who pines for a reconciliation, and Celia's best friend Tiny longs for the married Vera. These unhappy, futureless but intractable relationships are mirrored by the novel's political concerns. Caz is on leave from Palestine and is deeply disillusioned, Tom went mad during the war, and it is telling that the family scandal that blights Celia and Caz's lives took place in India. Just as Pompey's anti-semitism was tested in Novel on Yellow Paper, so Celia's traditional nationalism and sentimental support for colonialism is challenged throughout The Holiday.
Smith's novels are serious, stylistically radical and politically complex. Smith is particularly good at describing the liveliness of parties, the intricacies of office politics and the small pleasures of family life. Smith is also one of the few English writers who can describe suburbia with insight and warmth.
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