Stevie Smith (1902-1971)

A selective list of online literary criticism for poet Stevie Smith, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the Modern Language Association Guidelines for Web Pages


main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century poetry | 20th-century women writers | about literaryhistory.com


Literary Criticism

Bluemel, Kristin. "Suburbs are not so bad I think": Stevie Smith's Problem of Place in 1930s and '40s London. "In contrast to the vast majority of 1930s and '40s writers, she does not naively celebrate or thoughtlessly excoriate the suburb in her writings." Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, Fall 2003

Dowson, Jane and Alice Entwistle. "Stevie Smith," in A History of Twentieth-century British Women's Poetry (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005). Publisher's web site. At Google Books

Hirsch, Edward. "Stevie: The Movie." Poet Edward Hirsch says of the movie about poet Stevie Smith, "Stevie is a low budget, low-tech art movie that was filmed in seventeen days in 1978. I find it surprisingly profound, deeply felt, though parts of it, perhaps inevitably, also feel quickly shot, hastily improvised." American Poetry Review, Jul/Aug 2000

Huk, Romana. A review of Romana Huk's Stevie Smith: Between the Lines (Palgrave 2004) notes that the work attempts "to reclaim or, more accurately, to proclaim, the deceptive complexity of an author still best remembered for her mannered poetry readings, her much-anthologised 'Not Waving But Drowning', or the oddly intransigent drawings that accompanied much of her work." The Oxonian Review, by Will May

May, William. An introduction to Stevie Smith, which notes "Stevie Smith has been increasingly recognised as one of the most important female British poets of the twentieth-century, and the most original voice to emerge from the 1930s." Literary Encyclopedia, 9/18/06

Najarian, James. "Contributions to almighty truth: Stevie Smith's seditious romanticis." "The eccentricity of her poetry--its disparate sources, silly rhythms, and strange rhymes--might bear study. I would argue that it can be fruitfully studied as a pose: by posing as an insignificant doodler, Smith covers up what turn out to be traditional romantic assertions of poetic authority." Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 2003

Severin, Laura. "Recovering the serious antics of Stevie Smith's novels," Twentieth Century Literature, Winter, 1994

Severin, Laura. "Acting Out: The Performances of Edith Sitwell and Stevie Smith" in Poetry Off the Page: Twentieth-century British Women Poets in Performance (Ashgate Publishing). At Google Books

Walsh, Jessica. "Stevie Smith: Girl, Interrupted." "Enacting a poetic spin on Freud's recently born "talking cure" in order to address a number of mental illnesses she carried with her, including obsessive neurosis and severe bouts of depression, Smith repeatedly writes through her childhood, especially in the early works A Good Time Was Had by All (1937) and Tender Only to One (1938)." Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2004


Introduction, overview, unsigned, web sites

Short note on Stevie Smith the poet and Stevie the film, from the Jargon Society

A short introduction to Stevie Smith, plus Audio files of two brief interviews with Stevie Smith in 1965, from the BBC


Bibliography, library holdings, conferences

Information on Stevie Smith holdings from the British Library

Publisher's page for Stevie Smith: A Bibliography by Barbera, McBrien, and Bajan

Details about Stevie Smith papers held by the Univ. of Tulsa Dept. of Special Collections


main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century poetry | 20th-century women writers | about literaryhistory.com

1998-2009 by Jan Pridmore