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Stevie Smith was born in England, in Hull, Yorkshire. She lived there until she was three years old, when she then moved with her mother and sister to live with her aunt in Palmers Green, London.
She eventually went to the North London Collegiate School for Girls; she did not go to university but started her first job with a magazine publisher - Newnes Pearson. She became the private secretary to Sir George Newnes and Sir Neville Pearson.
Her first book, Novel on Yellow Paper, was published in 1936. In 1937 her first volume of poetry, A Good Time Was Had By All, was finally published.
Both books were successful. She went on to have published a further eight collections of poetry, and two more novels.
Stevie Smith died in 1971; she was sixty-eight years old.
Her Collected Poems were published in 1975.
Stevie the Cartoonist
Stevie Smiths quirky drawings are often used to accompany her poems. According to Macgibbon, James (The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith, 1977, p11) these drawings were not necessarily intended to be used with specific poems, but were - according to Stevie Smith - 'simply doodles which she merely picked out such as seemed appropriate'. The drawings were not initially published with her poems, and rarely appeared, but have been included in later publications.
Some Are More Human Than Others: Sketch-book by Stevie Smith is a book dedicated to her illustrations.
All drawings found on this website can be found in The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith, (1977).
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