Stevie Smith's apparent oddness obscured how deliberate, observant and engaged with the world she was. 

Jack Barbera and William McBrien’s biography follows the life behind her poems. Smith's tapestry; an abandoned family, long stretches of illness, the domestic world of Palmers Green, office work, literary London, friendships, publishing, and of course, the public persona. Drawing on letters, archival material and testimony from people who knew her, it treats the famous mixture of nursery-rhyme simplicity, black humour, morbidity and drawings as part of a much more controlled literary intelligence. Contemporary reviewers were already noting how carefully the book dismantled the idea of Smith as merely naive or eccentric. 

There is plenty here for readers interested in the machinery around a writer as well as the writer herself: the reception of Novel on Yellow Paper, Smith’s emergence into the London literary scene, the relationship between her poetry and politics, her notorious preoccupation with death, and the way she used comic self-presentation to keep seriousness slightly off balance. The book is illustrated with photographs and some of Smith’s wonderful drawings. 

Edition / condition: Papermac / Macmillan Publishers, London, 1986. First paperback edition; originally published by William Heinemann in 1985. Paperback. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs and drawings. Light general shelf and edge wear, with mild rubbing and age-toning; binding firm and internally clean. Very good condition.