I am a desperate Stevie Smith addict.

Sylvia Plath

The eccentric landmark novel by the legendary English poet Stevie Smith: “a rare bird, a Maltese falcon” (The New Yorker)

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Novel on Yellow Paper

by Stevie Smith

I am a forward-thinking girl, and don’t stay where I am. ‘Left right, be bright.’

Pompey Casmilus, Stevie Smith’s loquacious alter ego, works as a secretary and writes down on yellow office paper this wickedly amusing novel. “Dear Reader,” she addresses us politely in the whirlwind of her opinions on death, sex, anti-Semitism, art, Greek tragedy, friendship, marriage, Nazism, gossip, and the suburbs. But most of all Pompey talks about love.

When Smith first tried to get her poems published in 1935, 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 as “a curious, amusing, provocative and very serious piece of work” (The London Times Literary Supplement, 1936).

Paperback(published Feb, 01 2022)

ISBN
9780811231671
Price US
17.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
160

Paperback(published Jun, 01 1994)

ISBN
9780811212397
Price US
17.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
256
Portrait of Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith

20th century English poet and novelist

I am a desperate Stevie Smith addict.

Sylvia Plath

Unique and cheerfully gruesome.

Robert Lowell

She is a writer of astonishing skill, range, comedy, and depth of feeling; she is inimitable, strange, and utterly original.

Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books

An artist of the utmost sophistication… Her pre-war novel 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