Editing Stevie Smith (section)

==Life==
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 (1872-1949) and Ethel Rahel (1876-1919), daughter of successful maritime engineer John Spear.<ref Name="ODNB">[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31695 Smith, Florence Margaret (Stevie) (1902–1971)], Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Retrieved 28 July 2023</ref><ref Name="Couzyn32">(Couzyn, Jeni 1985) ''Contemporary Women Poets''. Bloodaxe, p. 32.</ref> She 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]].

Her father was a shipping agent, a business that he had inherited from his father. As the company and his marriage began to fall apart, he ran away to sea and Smith saw very little of him after that.<ref Name="ODNB" /> He appeared occasionally on 24-hour shore leave and sent very brief postcards (one of which read, "Off to [[Valparaiso]], Love Daddy").

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.<ref Name="Couzyn32"/> She resented the fact that her father had abandoned his family. Later, when her mother became ill, her aunt Madge Spear (whom Smith called "The Lion Aunt") came to live with them, raised Smith and her elder sister Molly and became the most important person in Smith's life. Spear was a feminist who claimed to have "no patience" with men and, as Smith wrote, "she also had 'no patience' with Hitler". Smith and Molly, raised in a family of women, became attached to their own independence, in contrast to what Smith described as the typical Victorian family atmosphere of "father knows best".

When Smith was five, she developed [[tuberculosis|tuberculous]] [[peritonitis]] and was sent to a [[sanatorium]] near [[Broadstairs]], [[Kent]], where she remained for three years.<ref Name="Couzyn33">(Couzyn, Jeni 1985) ''Contemporary Women Poets''. Bloodaxe, p. 33.</ref> She 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.<ref Name="ODNB" /> Death and fear fascinated her and provide the subjects of many of her poems.<ref Name="Couzyn35">(Couzyn, Jeni 1985) ''Contemporary Women Poets''. Bloodaxe, p. 35.</ref> Her mother died when Smith was 16.<ref Name="Couzyn35"/>

When suffering from the depression to which she was subject all her life, Smith was so consoled by the thought of death as a release that, as she put it, she did not have to commit [[suicide]]. She wrote in several poems that death was "the only god who must come when he is called." Smith suffered throughout her life from an acute nervousness, described as a mix of shyness and intense sensitivity.

In the poem "A House of Mercy", she wrote of her childhood house in North London:
<blockquote><poem>
It was a house of female habitation,
Two ladies fair inhabited the house,
And they were brave. For although Fear knocked loud

Upon the door, and said he must come in,
They did not let him in.<ref Name="Couzyn33"/>
</poem></blockquote>

Smith was educated at [[Palmers Green High School]] and at the [[North London Collegiate School]] for Girls.<ref Name="ODNB" /> She 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. Despite her secluded life, she corresponded and socialised widely with other writers and creative artists, including [[Elisabeth Lutyens]], [[Sally Chilver]], [[Inez Holden]], [[Naomi Mitchison]], [[Isobel English]] and Anna Kallin.

After she retired from Sir Neville Pearson's service following a nervous breakdown, she gave poetry readings and broadcasts on the [[BBC]] that gained her new friends and readers among a younger generation. [[Sylvia Plath]] became a fan of her poetry and sent Smith a letter in 1962, describing herself as "a desperate Smith-addict." Plath expressed interest in meeting in person but took her own life soon after sending the letter.<ref>(Barbera, Jack & McBrien, William, editors 1982) ''Me Again, Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith'', Virago Press Limited, p. 6.</ref>

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. Likewise, her political views vacillated between her aunt's [[Toryism]] and her friends' left-wing tendencies. 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. She never entirely abandoned or accepted the [[High Church]] [[Anglican]] faith of her childhood, describing herself as a "lapsed atheist", and wrote sensitively about theological puzzles;<ref name="Couzyn39">(Couzyn, Jeni 1985) ''Contemporary Women Poets''. Bloodaxe, p. 39.</ref>"There is a God in whom I do not believe/Yet to this God my love stretches." Her 14-page essay of 1958, "The Necessity of Not Believing", concludes: "There is no reason to be sad, as some people are sad when they feel religion slipping off from them. There is no reason to be sad, it is a good thing." The essay was unveiled at a meeting of the Cambridge [[Humanist]] Society.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/14-september/faith/faith-features/hell-and-high-water-the-significance-of-faith-for-modern-writers|title=Hell and high water: the significance of faith for modern writers|work=[[Church Times]]|access-date=14 September 2018|date=14 September 2018|last=Harries|first=Richard|author-link=Richard Harries}}</ref>

Smith died of a brain tumour on 7 March 1971.<ref Name="Couzyn32"/> Her last collection, ''Scorpion and other Poems'' was published posthumously in 1972, and the ''Collected Poems'' followed in 1975. Three novels were republished and there was a successful play based on her life, ''[[Stevie (play)|Stevie]]'', written by [[Hugh Whitemore]]. It was filmed in 1978 by Robert Enders and starred [[Glenda Jackson]] and [[Mona Washbourne]].<ref Name="ODNB" />