Novel On Yellow Paper

(Paperback)

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INTRODUCED BY RACHEL COOKE

'Virginia Woolf's roving consciousness lies behind the prose in Novel on Yellow Paper, but the tone owes more to Dorothy Parker . . . When first published in 1936, it overnight turned Smith into a celebrity . . . the subversiveness of this novel has never lost its appeal, its greatness lying in its exuberant celebration of the uncircumscribed spirit' - Frances Spalding, Independent

Stevie's alter ego Pompey is young, in love and working as a secretary for the magnificent Sir Phoebus Ullwater. In between making coffee and typing letters for Sir Phoebus, Pompey scribbles down - on yellow office paper - her quirky thoughts. Her flights of imagination take in Euripedes, sex education, Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church, shattering conventions in their wake.

Reviews

A more individual talent than Stevie Smith's you don't get. An artist of utmost sophistication... Her pre-war Novel on Yellow Paper is an unforgettable work that has nevertheless needed to be rediscovered several times since the day it was first greeted, correctly, as a masterpiece - Clive James, the New Yorker

Author Bio

Stevie Smith was born Florence Margaret in 1902. When she tried to publish a volume of poems, she was told to 'go away and write a novel'. This was the result. She died in 1971.