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Stevie Smith: A Biography
Stevie Smith had a unique literary her idiosyncratic, wonderfully funny and poignant poems established her as one of the most individual of English modern poets. She claimed her own life was 'precious dull', but Frances Spalding's acclaimed biography, revised with a new introduction for this centenary edition, reveals a far from conventional woman.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Frances Spalding
67 books16 followersFrances Spalding CBE, FRSL (née Crabtree) is a British art historian, writer and a former editor of The Burlington Magazine.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 16, 2025
The literary establishment was slow to recognise that Stevie Smith was a poet of genius, possibly because her poetry is so entertaining, and for a long time she was accorded only the patronising and marginal status of interesting oddity or amusing eccentric. The reading public, unencumbered by the delusion that solemnity equal seriousness, was much quicker to spot that here was a complex and singular voice. The deceptive simplicity of her poetry masks a sophisticated technique and her playful manner and anarchic humour reveal the sober and sobering philosophy of one who found life perfectly tragic and unbearably funny.
Frances Spalding acknowledges that, at first glance, Smith is an unpromising subject for a biographer. Her life was outwardly uneventful: she lived with her aunt in the same house in a North London suburb for most of her life, worked for many years in a humdrum job as a secretary to a magazine publisher, rarely ventured outside England, and had few intimate relationships.
Nonetheless, this book certainly dispelled any lingering illusions I had about Stevie as the hermit of Palmers Green. She was, in fact, a dedicated party animal with many friends and acquaintances, all of whom she satirised in her novels (‘Good-bye to all my friends, my beautiful and lovely friends’ she writes at the start of Novel on Yellow Notepaper, and not without reason). The names of those friends and acquaintances, some of them still resonant and others largely forgotten, evoke a lost cultural age: Malcolm Muggeridge, Inez Holden, Kay Dick, Anthony Powell, Robert Graves, H. G. Wells, Rosamond Lehman, Elizabeth Lutyens, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Olivia Manning, and George Orwell. She contributed to Orwell’s pioneering wartime poetry broadcasts, may or may not have had an affair with him, and sent him up something rotten in her novel The Holiday. Like all great satirists she had a certain aloofness but, Spalding insists, when making merciless fun of her friends in print she was motivated not by malice but the intensity of her emotions and the need to record them honestly in her work.
The book is subtitled ‘A Critical Biography’ and is strong on the relationship between the life and the work. Smith was an autobiographical writer and the personality of the poems mirror her own - outwardly convivial and inwardly alienated. Like her poems, she was a curious cocktail of the naive and the knowing, humane but with an all too human vicious streak. On occasion she clearly could be a complete pain in the neck: when bored at dinner parties she would disrupt the conversation by bursting into song and always insisted on a lift home no matter the inconvenience caused. But she approached life with uncommon honesty, was supportive to young writers, had a subversive sense of fun and, in her own words, enjoyed ‘a good giggle’.
Suicide and death are recurring themes in her poetry with death viewed as a friend who will eventually arrive to free one from the burden of existence. Stevie Smith first contemplated suicide during a difficult period in childhood and the experience left her with a sense of control over her destiny which ‘cheered me up wonderfully and quite saved my life. For if one can remove oneself at any time from the world, why particularly now?’ This attitude might, paradoxically, explain why she didn’t commit suicide. Despite their wildly different styles, it wasn’t that surprising to discover that Sylvia Plath wrote her an effusive fan letter declaring herself ‘a desperate Smith addict’ and asking to meet. Smith’s reply was gracious but less than effusive and also made it obvious that she had never read Plath.
Life for her, it seems, was largely a series of mutual misunderstandings. This idea is poignantly expressed in her most famous poem, Not Waving But Drowning, in which the desperate distress signals of a drowning man are misinterpreted by onlookers as cheery greetings and so ignored. She created characters and told stories but, as she attested in interviews, behind all of these was the character and story of Stevie Smith. She reworked Greek myths and fairy tales to express her own view of life. Her frog prince is quite content at the bottom of his well and views the prospect of disenchantment with some foreboding.
In the 1960s, and her own sixties (her last decade as it turned out, she died of a brain tumour in 1971), Stevie became a hit on the burgeoning poetry circuit performing alongside much younger poets like Michael Horowitz, Adrian Mitchell, and Brian Patten. A natural performer, she had done a bit of acting at school, she recited and sometimes sang her poetry in a deadpan style and acquired a new and youthful audience who were captivated by her individuality and questioning spirit. Recordings of her are available online and a rare delight they are too.
Spalding’s biography offers insight into Smith’s complex personality and scholarly analysis of the poems. She demolishes the myth of Smith as a wilfully quirky minor poet who peddled the bizarre and reveals an original and powerful artist; a poet who defies loneliness, isolation and despair with wit and humour, and whose unflinching honesty about the human condition reduces the reader to tears of helpless laughter.
Frances Spalding acknowledges that, at first glance, Smith is an unpromising subject for a biographer. Her life was outwardly uneventful: she lived with her aunt in the same house in a North London suburb for most of her life, worked for many years in a humdrum job as a secretary to a magazine publisher, rarely ventured outside England, and had few intimate relationships.
Nonetheless, this book certainly dispelled any lingering illusions I had about Stevie as the hermit of Palmers Green. She was, in fact, a dedicated party animal with many friends and acquaintances, all of whom she satirised in her novels (‘Good-bye to all my friends, my beautiful and lovely friends’ she writes at the start of Novel on Yellow Notepaper, and not without reason). The names of those friends and acquaintances, some of them still resonant and others largely forgotten, evoke a lost cultural age: Malcolm Muggeridge, Inez Holden, Kay Dick, Anthony Powell, Robert Graves, H. G. Wells, Rosamond Lehman, Elizabeth Lutyens, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Olivia Manning, and George Orwell. She contributed to Orwell’s pioneering wartime poetry broadcasts, may or may not have had an affair with him, and sent him up something rotten in her novel The Holiday. Like all great satirists she had a certain aloofness but, Spalding insists, when making merciless fun of her friends in print she was motivated not by malice but the intensity of her emotions and the need to record them honestly in her work.
The book is subtitled ‘A Critical Biography’ and is strong on the relationship between the life and the work. Smith was an autobiographical writer and the personality of the poems mirror her own - outwardly convivial and inwardly alienated. Like her poems, she was a curious cocktail of the naive and the knowing, humane but with an all too human vicious streak. On occasion she clearly could be a complete pain in the neck: when bored at dinner parties she would disrupt the conversation by bursting into song and always insisted on a lift home no matter the inconvenience caused. But she approached life with uncommon honesty, was supportive to young writers, had a subversive sense of fun and, in her own words, enjoyed ‘a good giggle’.
Suicide and death are recurring themes in her poetry with death viewed as a friend who will eventually arrive to free one from the burden of existence. Stevie Smith first contemplated suicide during a difficult period in childhood and the experience left her with a sense of control over her destiny which ‘cheered me up wonderfully and quite saved my life. For if one can remove oneself at any time from the world, why particularly now?’ This attitude might, paradoxically, explain why she didn’t commit suicide. Despite their wildly different styles, it wasn’t that surprising to discover that Sylvia Plath wrote her an effusive fan letter declaring herself ‘a desperate Smith addict’ and asking to meet. Smith’s reply was gracious but less than effusive and also made it obvious that she had never read Plath.
Life for her, it seems, was largely a series of mutual misunderstandings. This idea is poignantly expressed in her most famous poem, Not Waving But Drowning, in which the desperate distress signals of a drowning man are misinterpreted by onlookers as cheery greetings and so ignored. She created characters and told stories but, as she attested in interviews, behind all of these was the character and story of Stevie Smith. She reworked Greek myths and fairy tales to express her own view of life. Her frog prince is quite content at the bottom of his well and views the prospect of disenchantment with some foreboding.
In the 1960s, and her own sixties (her last decade as it turned out, she died of a brain tumour in 1971), Stevie became a hit on the burgeoning poetry circuit performing alongside much younger poets like Michael Horowitz, Adrian Mitchell, and Brian Patten. A natural performer, she had done a bit of acting at school, she recited and sometimes sang her poetry in a deadpan style and acquired a new and youthful audience who were captivated by her individuality and questioning spirit. Recordings of her are available online and a rare delight they are too.
Spalding’s biography offers insight into Smith’s complex personality and scholarly analysis of the poems. She demolishes the myth of Smith as a wilfully quirky minor poet who peddled the bizarre and reveals an original and powerful artist; a poet who defies loneliness, isolation and despair with wit and humour, and whose unflinching honesty about the human condition reduces the reader to tears of helpless laughter.
January 14, 2026
Having read this biography I searched and found the movie called Stevie on YouTube. It stars Glenda Jackson and closely follows the events described in the biography. Glenda Jackson had seen Stevie Smith do a poetry reading and it may have even been the reading at the Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden where 150 people crammed into a room for 80 on the second floor and nearly caused a structural collapse. The movie and Glenda Jackson are excellent but the biography looks at her life in more detail. Her connection with Grorge Orwell is fascinating.
Stevie was a star by the end of her life but she embraced loneliness over the years and befriended death. Working in London she lived with her aunt and mum until her mother died and then it was just Stevie and her Lion aunt. Finally, in old age, Stevie chose to keep on living by herself choosing to stay in the suburbs. This paring back of people in her life together with her rejection of marriage and questioning of religion mirrors the stance taken in her poetry which was sometimes dismissed as whimsy. It was anything but despite the simplicity of the line drawings that accompany the poetry. A fascinating story and Glenda Jackson does a great job in the title role playing alongside Mona Washbourne plays the no-nonsense aunt.
Stevie was a star by the end of her life but she embraced loneliness over the years and befriended death. Working in London she lived with her aunt and mum until her mother died and then it was just Stevie and her Lion aunt. Finally, in old age, Stevie chose to keep on living by herself choosing to stay in the suburbs. This paring back of people in her life together with her rejection of marriage and questioning of religion mirrors the stance taken in her poetry which was sometimes dismissed as whimsy. It was anything but despite the simplicity of the line drawings that accompany the poetry. A fascinating story and Glenda Jackson does a great job in the title role playing alongside Mona Washbourne plays the no-nonsense aunt.
May 13, 2025
It’s difficult to review a biography, after all, unless you’re a fanatic, how many books about one particular person are you likely to read?
I first discovered Ms.Smith through the film adaptation of Hugh Whitemore’s play, with Glenda Jackson. It’s wonderful, but Jackson doesn’t capture Ms.Smith’s unclassifiable, mordant, 20th Century vocal mannerisms.
I love all the stories of the lion Aunt and Palmer’s Green; the tedium and refuge of suburbia.
She is unique, as is her poetry, which is why I believe it took a lifetime of struggle to establish herself.
How is she unique? I would say a combination of Dorothy Parker, Wednesday Addams and Puck.
I found Ms.Spalding’s book a pleasure to read and would thoroughly recommend it, especially if you like 20th century English literature and literati.
I first discovered Ms.Smith through the film adaptation of Hugh Whitemore’s play, with Glenda Jackson. It’s wonderful, but Jackson doesn’t capture Ms.Smith’s unclassifiable, mordant, 20th Century vocal mannerisms.
I love all the stories of the lion Aunt and Palmer’s Green; the tedium and refuge of suburbia.
She is unique, as is her poetry, which is why I believe it took a lifetime of struggle to establish herself.
How is she unique? I would say a combination of Dorothy Parker, Wednesday Addams and Puck.
I found Ms.Spalding’s book a pleasure to read and would thoroughly recommend it, especially if you like 20th century English literature and literati.
October 18, 2018
Informative due to the depth of research. A must read for fans of women's writing and/or Stevie Smith as it adds vital socio-historical context to Smith's fiction.
February 20, 2020
pretty good. love stevie smith so glad to have read it
November 21, 2022
Solid and informative biography of one of England’s greatest poets,
February 19, 2016
First read in May 1983 and revisited today.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews