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
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.
213
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 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
Intertextuality and Influence Shena Mackay
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...
Intertextuality and Influence Edna O'Brien
EOB has named many women writers as important to her: she includes among these Jane Austen , Emily Dickinson , Elizabeth Bowen , Anna Akhmatova , Anita Brookner , and Margaret Atwood , adding: Every...
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...

Timeline

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Texts

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