Constance Smedley

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Beginning early in the twentieth century, CS published forty books, about twenty of them novels and the rest plays, children's books, and non-fiction including a polemical feminist manifesto and a book of memoirs. Her writing was only one aspect of her career: through her theatrical ideals, teaching, and practice (writing and directing plays and pageants, not all of them published) it connected with her work in the visual arts: embroidery, illustration, and social movements.
  • BirthName: Constance Anne or Annie Smedley
  • Nicknames: The Princess, Peter
    The first nickname was given her at art school on account of a medieval-style dress she designed, embroidered, and wore; the name stuck with later friends who saw her as a child and dreamer. The second nickname is that of the third son in a fairy story, who succeeds where his brothers fail.
    Smedley, Constance, and Maxwell Armfield. Crusaders. Chatto & Windus, 1912, x, 416 pp.
    36-7
    Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
    under Smedley

  • Married: Armfield; Constance Smedley Armfield

Milestones

20 June 1876

CS was born in Trinity Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, the eldest in what became a family of three.
The Feminist Companion and other sources give her birth date erroneously as 1881.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Smedley

1940

The last book that CS published was Peter in Sweden, a novel for children in which a young English boy, sent to stay with Swedish relations, learns how it feels to be a foreigner.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

9 March 1941

CS died of heart failure at the Old Coaching Inn, 15a High Street, West Wycombe.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Smedley and Armstead

Biography

Birth and Family

20 June 1876

CS was born in Trinity Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, the eldest in what became a family of three.
The Feminist Companion and other sources give her birth date erroneously as 1881.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Smedley

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