Novel On Yellow Paper

Pompey Casmilus, Stevie Smith's loquacious alter ego and heroine, works as a secretary and writes down on yellow office paper this wickedly amusing and brainy novel. "Dear Reader," she addresses us politely in the whirlwind of her opinions on death, sex, anti-Semitism, art, Greek tragedy, friendship, her Aunt (the magnificent "Lion of Hull"), marriage, Nazism, gossip, and the suburbs. As an energetic feminist avant la lettre, Pompey declares: "I am a forward-thinking girl, and don't stay where I am. 'Left right, be bright.'" But most of all Pompey talks about love: love for friends, love for Freddy--for Pompey is young and in love, but must she marry? Saturated with what Robert Lowell described as Smith's "unique and cheerfully gruesome voice," Novel on Yellow Paper is magnificent and a joy to read. Stevie Smith first tried to get her poems published in 1935, but she was told by a publisher to "go away and write a novel." Novel on Yellow Paper, the happy result of this advice, made its author an instant celebrity and was acclaimed at the time as "a curious, amusing, provocative and very serious piece of work" (The London Times Literary Supplement, 1936).