Stevie Smith

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Standard Name: Smith, Stevie
Birth Name: Florence Margaret Smith
Nickname: Peggy
Nickname: Stevie
Pseudonym: S. S.
SS , publishing in the mid twentieth century, was a poet who is hard to categorise. All of her works—poetry, novels, stories, essays, reviews, a radio play, and her inimitable drawings— have a quirkiness, a pretence of naivete which masks an unyielding and uncomforting view of life. All of them, too, are based on her own life and the lives of her friends: the last characteristic brought a number of difficulties like resentment and threats of libel actions.
Photograph of a circular blue English Heritage plaque in the brick wall of Smith's "house of female habitation" in Palmers Green. It reads: "Stevie Smith, 1902-1971, Poet lived here 1906-1971."
Black-and-white photo of Stevie Smith sitting in a park, 1954. Looking off-camera, she wears a white top, her arms are crossed in front of her, and she holds a li cigarette in her hand.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Reception Barbara Pym
Pym is not one of those women writers whose stock has risen through feminist re-evaluation. Five years after the influential Times Literary Supplement article was published, Penelope Lively wrote, I am always surprised that the...
Reception Sappho
Among the earliest of Sappho 's translators into English was Anne Finch ; among recent translators is Mary Barnard , 1958. Stevie Smith declined to take her on. Finch chose to render not a love-poem...
Reception E. J. Scovell
This volume was a Poetry Book Society recommendation.
Dowson, Jane, editor. Women’s Poetry of the 1930s: A Critical Anthology. Routledge.
122
Janet Montefiore regrets the absence of EJS from Robin Skelton 's anthology New Verse, 1964, while acknowledging that it would be unfair to blame Skelton...
Publishing Jeni Couzyn
In the late 1960s a male friend of JC passed on to her a commission for an anthology of love poems by women. The publisher had delicate lyrics in mind, and was horrified at Couzyn's...
politics Pamela Hansford Johnson
During the 1970s PHJ declared herself in sympathy with many of the aims of the Women's Liberation Movement. Equal pay for equal work, equality of opportunity, in so far as it is possible.
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner.
57
She...
Occupation Frances Horovitz
Patrick Magee , Harvey Hall , Stevie Smith , Hugh Dickson , and Basil Jones were the other readers for the project. The poets from whose work they read included W. B. Yeats , D. H. Lawrence
Occupation Philip Larkin
From the 1960s PL became a committee-man and public intellectual. He rendered service in various ways to his profession of librarianship. For the Arts Council of Great Britain he served on the literature panel, and...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
Printed praise came from Stevie Smith and Raymond Mortimer among others. Elizabeth Taylor noticed how the reviewers' imagery harped on weapons: rapiers, axes, stilettos, knives and grenades.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
213
Literary responses Olivia Manning
This book evoked a double-edged response from Ivy Compton-Burnett who, writing to Elizabeth Taylor , said: It really is full of very good descriptions. Quite excellent descriptions. I don't know if you care for descriptions...
Literary responses Rosamond Lehmann
RL 's Epilogue relates her own anxiety, on the day the book was first published, about its probable reception. She was flooded with relief, joy, gratitude, at finding both Cyril Connolly and Philip Toynbee
Literary responses Amber Reeves
Ernest Jones , reviewing this book in The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, made no objection to her distinction between superego and moral code. The book was also reviewed by Stevie Smith .
Reeves, Amber. Ethics for Unbelievers. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
vi
“Stevie Smith Papers. Series II: Book Reviews”. McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa: Department of Special Collections and University Archives.
Literary responses Ethel M. Dell
Stevie Smith , selecting EMD 's The Way of an Eagle as the eleventh in a list of Best Sellers of the Century for the Observer newspaper, praised it in very high terms.
Dell, Penelope. Nettie and Sissie. Hamish Hamilton.
167
Literary responses Ada Leverson
Stevie Smith in 1951 called Anne Yeo an astonishing portrait for the period.
Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne.
107
Burkhart, Charles. Ada Leverson. Twayne.
153n3
Literary responses Jean Rhys
Critic Sanford Sternlicht comments that her writing is like that of Stevie Smith , a contemporary who also seemed to relate to animals better than she related to people.
Sternlicht, Sanford. Jean Rhys. Twayne.
131
Literary responses Ada Leverson
This novel was widely praised when it appeared. The Daily Mail reviewer, however, dismissed it as the typically inferior product of a lady writer, comparing it to its disadvantage with Dolores, first (and now...

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