Stevie Smith, who died in 1971, remains one of the most fascinating and original English literary figures of this century. Her wit and eccentricity have become legend, her personal style was unique, her poems are among the oddest, funniest, and most moving in the language. Her life was so compelling that it became the subject of a play and a film, both starring Glenda Jackson. In this charming biography, Jack Barbera and William McBrien capture the essence of a remarkable woman and her impact on the literary scene. Drawing on a wealth of private and archival material, much of it previously unknown, they present the fullest and most convincing portrait yet of Stevie Smith's life and work. They depict the unhappiness of her long childhood exile in the hospital with tuberculosis, her father's abandonment of the family, and her mother's early death.
