Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Stevie Smith
-
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.
Again her introduction is interesting and trenchant. She observes that the early twentieth century already feels remote. Her selection runs from Charlotte Mew
(born in 1869) to a clutch of women a little over thirty:...
Textual Features
Anna Akhmatova
The lyrics are individually dated. One written on 19 August 1939 addresses Death (as Stevie Smith
was to do a generation later) with a prayer to come quickly:
Feinstein, Elaine. Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
171-2
I am waiting . ....
Literary responses
Patricia Beer
Reviewers continued on a note of faint praise. Anthony Thwaite
, for instance, found in PB
's work an air of appraising experience in small mouthfuls, fastidious, ironical.
Sherry, Vincent B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 40. Gale Research.
26
British Book News found her solid...
Friends, Associates
Patricia Beer
PB
met her fellow-poet Stevie Smith
late in Smith's life, and developed a friendship which, though not close,
Mullan, John. “Obituary: Patricia Beer”. The Guardian, p. 18.
18
she much valued.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Patricia Beer
Some of PB
's technical experimenting is playful. In Memory of Stevie Smith sums up its tribute in an echo of its subject's rhythms: A heroine is someone who does what you cannot do /...
Textual Production
Vera Brittain
She had prepared herself for bad press on this account; however, she did not expect quite the level of fierce condemnation the book did receive. Among those who harshly criticized it were Lorna Lewis
and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anita Brookner
It is titled from the apparently Swiss resort hotel where the heroine, Edith Hope, is packed off by her friends after an embarrassing public faux pas. Trapped in an unsuspected love-affair with a married man...
Family and Intimate relationships
Ivy Compton-Burnett
But they lived as a couple. ICB
distrusted marriage and advised her women friends not to marry if they could avoid it; she also believed that most relationships evolve into a domination of the weaker...
Friends, Associates
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Her relationship with a close woman friend, Stevie Smith
, became the subject of a book by a younger friend, Kay Dick
, in 1971.
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
Anthologization
Wendy Cope
The Muse Strikes Back: A Poetic Response by Women to Men, edited by Katherine McAlpine
and Gail White
, included no less than six items from WC
.
She is one of only five...
Reception
Frances Cornford
In this honour she followed Ruth Pitter
(the first woman to be awarded the Queen's gold medal) and preceded Stevie Smith
.
Textual Production
Jeni Couzyn
Jeni Couzyn
edited The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets, featuring poems and comments by eleven writers. Besides an autobiographical note for her own work, Couzyns supplied an essay on Stevie Smith
.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Couzyn, Jeni, editor. The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Women Poets. Bloodaxe Books.
33-40, 215-18
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...
Textual Production
Jeni Couzyn
JC
edited for the 1970 Camden Festival a volume of twelve specially commissioned and previously unprinted poems, entitled Twelve to Twelve: Poetry D-Day, published through the Poets' Trust
. This collection (whose cover gave...
Timeline
1866: The Royal Society of Arts established a scheme...
National or international item
1866
The Royal Society of Arts established a scheme (believed to be the first in the world) for setting up commemorative plaques on buildings associated with famous people.
Quinn, Ben. “Plaque blues. Cuts hit heritage scheme”. Guardian Weekly, p. 16.
January 1930: International Women's News began publica...
1965: Giles Gordon did a series of interviews for...
Women writers item
1965
Giles Gordon
did a series of interviews for The Scotsman with female authors: a species of writer that at the time wasn't particularly recognised, although it certainly had been in the previous century.
May 1978: Virago Press issued its first Virago Modern...
Women writers item
May 1978
Virago Press
issued its first Virago Modern Classics, a historically important series most though not all of which were novels.
10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...
Writing climate item
10 September 2003
Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.
Texts
Smith, Stevie. A Good Time Was Had by All. Jonathan Cape, 1937.
Smith, Stevie, and Stevie Smith. “A Turn Outside”. Me Again, Virago, pp. 335-58.
Smith, Stevie. Harold’s Leap. Chapman and Hall, 1950.
Smith, Stevie. “Introduction”. Me Again, edited by Jack Barbera and William McBrien, Vintage, 1983, pp. 1-10.
Cooke, Rachel, and Stevie Smith. “Introduction”. Novel on Yellow Paper, Virago, 2015.
Smith, Stevie. Me Again. Editors Barbera, Jack and William McBrien, Vintage, 1983.
Smith, Stevie. Mother, What Is Man?. Jonathan Cape, 1942.
Smith, Stevie. Not Waving but Drowning. André Deutsch, 1957.
Smith, Stevie. “Note to the 1985 edition”. Selected Poems, edited by James MacGibbon, Penguin, 1978.
Smith, Stevie. Novel on Yellow Paper. Jonathan Cape, 1936.
Smith, Stevie. Over the Frontier. Jonathan Cape, 1938.
Smith, Stevie. Scorpion. Longman, 1972.
Smith, Stevie. Selected Poems. Longman, 1962.
Smith, Stevie. Some Are More Human Than Others: Sketch-Book. Gaberbocchus, 1958.
Smith, Stevie. Tender Only to One. Jonathan Cape, 1938.
Smith, Stevie. The Best Beast. Knopf, 1969.
Smith, Stevie. The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith. Allen Lane, 1975.
Smith, Stevie. The Frog Prince. Longman, 1966.
Smith, Stevie. The Holiday. Chapman and Hall, 1949.
