THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Smart, Elizabeth ___ 1913-1986 ___
Canadian ___ writer
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Smart was born into a privileged
family in Ottawa, Canada, studied at private schools, and was then sent
to King's College, London, where she studied piano. In her mid-20s, she
was taken on as secretary by Margaret Watt, head of Associated Country Women
of the World, and travelled extensively with her to conferences. It was
during this period that she first became interested in the poet George Barker.
She wrote for the 'Ottawa Journal' for some months, and she travelled on
her own, mostly in the US. Eventually, she managed to arrange a meeting
with Barker, with whom she launched a long-lasting affair. She returned
to Canada to give birth to a daughter (by Barker), and then went to work
for the British embassy in Washington. She fell pregnant against during
the war, and travelled to the UK to join Barker. There she worked for the
British Ministry of Defence while caring for her two children. Her best
known work, 'By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept', a semi-autobiographical
novel about her relationship with Barker, was published in 1945. Thanks
to the negative influence of her parents, the book was banned in Canada.
Thereafter, Barker visited Smart often in London, and they had two more
children, although Barker never left his wife. After the war, Smart worked
as an advertisement copywriter and as a magazine editor. She retired in
the mid-1960s to a cottage in Suffolk, where she continued to write poetry
and fiction.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1933-1986 ___ literary social travel
self family nature US UK Australia SriLanka Mexico
WEB TEXT LINKS
about
the diary
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Library
and Archives Canada
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
Necessary Secrets: The Journals
of Elizabeth Smart
On the Side of the Angels
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |