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.
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
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
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...
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...
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
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Olivia Manning
They met and married within a few weeks. Reggie Smith, who was home on leave from a job in Bucharest, was a socialist, a charmer, a philanderer, and a feminist (who was later to edit...
Health
Olivia Manning
In March 1948 Stevie Smith
thought her depressed.
David, Deirdre. Olivia Manning: A Woman at War. Oxford University Press.
182
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...
Textual Features
Olivia Manning
This novel's story reveals obvious autobiographical elements. Ellie Parsons, whose mother runs a down-at-heel seaside restaurant, escapes to London to work as a packer for a fashionable furniture designer. She moves into the decorative side...
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...
