30 Facts About Stevie Smith

Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith, was an English poet and novelist.

Stevie Smith won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith at number 34 De La Pole Avenue in Kingston upon Hull, she was the second daughter of Charles Ward Smith and Ethel Rahel, daughter of successful maritime engineer John Spear.

Stevie Smith was called "Peggy" within her family, but acquired the name "Stevie" as a young woman when she was riding in the park with a friend who said that she reminded him of the jockey Steve Donoghue.

Stevie Smith's father was a shipping agent, a business that he had inherited from his father.

Stevie Smith appeared occasionally on 24-hour shore leave and sent very brief postcards.

When Stevie Smith was three years old, she moved with her mother and sister to Palmers Green in North London where she would live until her death in 1971.

Stevie Smith resented the fact that her father had abandoned his family.

Spear was a feminist who claimed to have "no patience" with men and, as Stevie Smith wrote, "she had 'no patience' with Hitler".

When Stevie Smith was five, she developed tuberculous peritonitis and was sent to a sanatorium near Broadstairs, Kent, where she remained for three years.

Stevie Smith related that her preoccupation with death began when she was seven, at a time when she was very distressed at being sent away from her mother.

When suffering from the depression to which she was subject all her life, Stevie Smith was so consoled by the thought of death as a release that, as she put it, she did not have to commit suicide.

Stevie Smith was educated at Palmers Green High School and at the North London Collegiate School for Girls.

Stevie Smith spent the remainder of her life with her aunt, and worked as private secretary to Sir Neville Pearson at Newnes Publishing Company in London from 1923 to 1953.

Stevie Smith was described by her friends as being naive and selfish in some ways and formidably intelligent in others, having been raised by her aunt as both a spoiled child and a resolutely autonomous woman.

Stevie Smith was celibate for most of her life, although she rejected the idea that she was lonely as a result, alleging that she had a number of intimate relationships with friends and family that kept her fulfilled.

Three novels were republished and there was a successful play based on her life, Stevie Smith, written by Hugh Whitemore.

Stevie Smith wrote three novels, the first of which, Novel on Yellow Paper, was published in 1936.

Stevie Smith said that two of the male characters in her last book are different aspects of George Orwell, who was close to Stevie Smith.

Stevie Smith plays word games, retells stories from classical and popular culture, remembers events from her childhood, gossips about her friends and describes her family, particularly her beloved Aunt.

Stevie Smith describes two unsuccessful relationships, first with the German Karl and then with the suburban Freddy.

Stevie Smith herself dismissed her second novel as a failed experiment, but its attempt to parody popular genre fiction to explore profound political issues now seems to anticipate post-modern fiction.

Stevie Smith's style was often very dark; her characters were perpetually saying "goodbye" to their friends or welcoming death.

Stevie Smith was never sentimental, undercutting any pathetic effects with the ruthless honesty of her humour.

Stevie Smith said she got the phrase from parish magazines, where descriptions of church picnics often included this phrase.

Stevie Smith was awarded the Cholmondeley Award for Poets in 1966 and won the Queen's Gold Medal for poetry in 1969.

Stevie Smith published nine volumes of poems in her lifetime.

Stevie Smith's poems have been the focus of writers and critics around the world.

In 2023, newly declassified UK government files revealed that Stevie Smith was considered as a candidate to be the new Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1967 following the death of John Masefield.

Stevie Smith was rejected after appointments secretary John Hewitt consulted with Dame Helen Gardner, the Merton Professor of English at the University of Oxford and Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, chair of The Poetry Society.