Stevie Smith, Novel on Yellow Paper

William May (University of Southern California)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1936

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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In 1935, Stevie Smith received yet another rejected batch of poems back from a publisher's only to be told to go away and write a novel.

Novel on Yellow Paper

(1936) was the result, published by Jonathan Cape the following year. Allegedly written in a dream state in under ten weeks, the book was an immediate critical and commercial success. On publication, it prompted a flurry of newspaper and magazine articles speculating as to the identity of the mysterious Stevie Smith, and even inspired a letter from the British poet Robert Nichols to Virginia Woolf congratulating her on a novel he had assumed she had written under a pseudonym. The novel is in fact very unlike Virginia Woolf, although it carries the influence of stream-of-consciousness writers such as Storm Jameson and Gertrude Stein.

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996 words

Citation: May, William. "Novel on Yellow Paper". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 September 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9924, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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