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.
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...
Literary responses
Olivia Manning
OM
resented a review by Stevie Smith
in the Sunday Times, which praised the many loving and studious things said here about cats, but then mixed its metaphors to devastating effect: Just a little...
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
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.
This short novel, with a large cast centred on a district in South London, vibrates with the tension between satire and sympathy. The title is ironic: the protagonist, Lyris Crane, is a painter too...
Intertextuality and Influence
Monica Furlong
She begins arrestingly: We live in a period in which it is not possible to talk meaningfully about God.
Furlong, Monica. The End of Our Exploring. Hodder and Stoughton.
13
She then posits an absolute human need for meaning and for myth (the core...
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...
Health
Olivia Manning
In March 1948 Stevie Smith
thought her depressed.
David, Deirdre. Olivia Manning: A Woman at War. Oxford University Press.
182
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.
Friends, Associates
Penelope Fitzgerald
PF
was a friend of L. P. Hartley
and of Stevie Smith
, both of whom she met when they contributed to World Review, of which she and her husband were editors. Her sudden...
Friends, Associates
Cecily Mackworth
Other friendships made now or later included many with distinguished women, like Ivy Compton-Burnett
(whom she found kinder to me than she apparently was to most other people),
Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet.
112
and Stevie Smith
, whom...
Friends, Associates
Rosita Forbes
She apparently had a friendly, teasing relationship while journeying with Ahmed Hassanein
, who went with her to Kufra but who was not, it seems, the creative mind behind the journey. Magazine publisher Sir Neville Pearson
Friends, Associates
Olivia Manning
OM
's early friends included Celia Jordan
. She met Stevie Smith
in 1937, after each had a novel come out from the same publisher within months of each other. A close friendship developed which...
Friends, Associates
Rumer Godden
RG
preserved her friendship with the director Jean Renoir
from the time that he filmed her novel The River. After moving to Highgate she became friendly with the writer Stevie Smith
(whom she calls...