Fiction
- Novel on Yellow Paper (Cape, 1936)
Stevie Smith's first novel is structured as the random typings of a bored secretary, Pompey. She plays word games, retells stories from classical and popular culture, remembers events from her childhood, gossips about her friends and describes her family, particularly her beloved Aunt.
As with all Smith's novels, there is an early scene where the heroine expresses feelings and beliefs which she will later feel significant, although ambiguous, regret for. In
Novel on Yellow Paper that belief is anti-Semitism, where she feels elation at being the "only Goy" at a Jewish party. This apparently throwaway scene acts as a timebomb, which detonates at the centre of the novel when Pompey visits Germany as the Nazi are gaining power. With horror, she acknowledges the continuity between her feeling "Hurray for being a Goy" at the party and the madness that is overtaking Germany.
The German scenes stand out in the novel, but perhaps equally powerful is her dissection of failed love. She describes two unsuccessful relationships, first with the German Karl and then with the suburban Freddy. The final section of the novel describes with unusual clarity the intense pain of her break-up with Freddy.
- Over the Frontier (Cape 1938)
Smith herself dismissed her second novel as a failed experiment, but its attempt to parody popular genre fiction in order to explore profound political issues now seems to anticipate post-modern fiction. If anti-Semitism was one of the key themes of
Novel on Yellow Paper,
Over the Frontier is concerned with militarism. In particular, she asks how the necessity of fighting Fascism can be achieved without descending into the nationalism and dehumanisation that fascism represents.
After a failed romance the heroine, Pompey, suffers a breakdown and is sent to Germany to recuperate. At this point the novel changes style radically, as Pompey becomes part of an adventure/spy yarn in the style of John Buchan or Dornford Yates. As the novel becomes increasingly dreamlike, Pompey crosses over the frontier to become a spy and soldier. If her initial motives are idealistic, she becomes seduced by the intrigue and, ultimately, violence. The vision Smith offers is a bleak one: "Power and cruelty are the strengths of our lives, and only in their weakness is there love."
- The Holiday (Chapman and Hall, 1949)
Smith's final novel is her own favourite, and most fully realised. It is concerned with personal and political malaise in the immediate post-war period. Most of the characters are either employed in the army or civil service in post-war reconstruction, and its heroine, Celia, works for the Ministry as a crytographer and propagandist.
The Holiday describes a series of hopeless relationships. Celia and her cousin Caz are in love, but cannot pursue their affair since it is believed that, because of their parents' adultery, they are half-brother and sister. Celia's other cousin Tom is in love with her, Basil is love with Tom, Tom is estranged from his father, Celia's beloved Uncle Heber, who pines for a reconciliation; and Celia's best friend Tiny longs for the married Vera. These unhappy, futureless but intractable relationships are mirrored by the novel's political concerns. The unsustainability of the British Empire and the uncertainty over Britain's post-war role are constant themes, and many of the characters discuss their personal and political concerns as if they were seamlessly linked. Caz is on leave from Palestine and is deeply disillusioned, Tom goes mad during the war, and it is telling that the family scandal that blights Celia and Caz's lives took place in India. Just as Pompey's anti-semitism was tested in
Novel on Yellow Paper, so Celia's traditional nationalism and sentimental support for colonialism is challenged throughout
The Holiday.
Poetry
- This Englishwoman (?,1937)
- A Good Time Was Had By All (Cape, 1937)
- Tender Only to One (Cape, 1938)
- Mother, What Is Man? (Cape, 1942)
- Harold's Leap (Cape, 1950)
- Not Waving but Drowning (Deutsch, 1957)
- Selected Poems (Longmans, 1962) includes 17 previously unpublished poems
- The Frog Prince (Longmans, 1966) includes 69 previously unpublished poems
- The Best Beast (Longmans, 1969)
- Two in One (Longmans, 1971) reprint of Selected Poems and The Frog Prince
- Scorpion and Other Poems (Longmans, 1972)
- Collected Poems (Allen Lane, 1975)
- Selected Poems (Penguin, 1978)
- New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith (New Directions, 1988)
Other
- Some Are More Human Than Others: A Sketch-Book (Gaberbocchus, 1958)
- Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith (Virago, 1984)
- 'The Necessity of Not Believing' (Gemini No 5 Spring 1958 Vol 2 No 1)
- An Anthology from X (Oxford University Press 1988). X ran from 1959-62. Edited by the poet David Wright & the painter Patrick Swift. Apart from contributions from Smith X also included writers such as Patrick Kavanagh, W.H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, Ted Hughes, et al.