Stevie Smith (real name Florence Margaret Smith) was born in Hull and studied at the North London Collegiate School for Girls. She was employed as a secretary at Newnes-Pearson, magazine publishers, for most of her life and also worked occasionally as a writer and broadcaster for the BBC.Stevie Smith lived at the north London suburb of Palmers Green with her aunt, an eccentric character whom she called "the Lion". Her aunt died in 1968, aged 96. Smith never married. Throughout her life she wrote poems, but she was also the author of a prose work, Novel on Yellow Paper (1936), which took the form of an entertaining, largely autobiographical monologue. Her other novels include The Holiday (1949), the story of a failed love affair. She also published short stories, essays and literary reviews.
However, Smith is primarily known as a poet. Eccentric, mischievous, often disturbing, these short pieces contain beneath their lighthearted surfaces an undertone of loneliness, boredom and death.
Her best-known poem is the title piece in the collection Not Waving but Drowning (1957), a line that has entered public consciousness; but her reputation was already established in 1937 by the collection A Good Time Was Had By All. In the 1960s, she was a popular figure at poetry readings and made a number of radio broadcasts and recordings.
In 1975, 4 years after her death, Smith's Collected Poems was published, illustrated by her own witty doodle-sketches of men, women and animals. Stevie, a play based on her life, was staged in 1977 with Glenda Jackson and was later made into a film.
