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
Friends, Associates Naomi Mitchison
NM 's adult friends included artists and writers such as Gertrude Hermes , Storm Jameson , Goldie Lowes Dickinson , Julian Trevelyan , Gerald Heard , and Rudi Messel . Among the close friends were...
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...
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...
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...
Education Stella Gibbons
At the time SG attended the school, its headmistress was Dr Sophie Bryant , a suffragist, political campaigner for Irish Home Rule, and the first British woman to receive a doctorate in science. SG wrote...
Cultural formation Barbara Pym
As for marriage, BP 's involvements with men as a student must have been to some extent influenced by social pressure to marry. She felt badly let down when Henry Harvey decided to wed another...
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...

Timeline

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Texts

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