Smith, Stevie

Smith, Stevie (Margaret Florence Smith), 1902–71, English poet and novelist, b. Hull, Yorkshire. At first unnoticed as a poet, she worked in a London publisher's office until 1953. Steadily gaining respect, Smith won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1969. Her poetry speaks with a fiercely comic voice, underneath which lie serious questions about contemporary life. Her works include the novels Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) and Holiday (1949); her poems include A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), Not Waving But Drowning (1957), and Selected Poems (1962). Posthumous volumes include Collected Poems (1975) and Me Again: Uncollected Writings (1981).

See studies by A. C. Rankin (1985) and S. Sternlicht (1990), and the biography by J. Barbera and W. McBrien (1987).

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