Emma Smith (writer)

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Emma Smith (born Elspeth Hallsmith on August 21, 1923 in Newquay , Cornwall ; died on April 24, 2018 in Putney ) was a British writer.

Smith's second novel, The Far Cry , won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1950. The reissue of this work more than 50 years later led to the author's renewed popularity in Great Britain at the beginning of the 21st century. The new edition also ensured that Smith began to write again after a decade-long career break and was able to build on the success of her youth with two volumes of memoirs - The Great Western Beach (2008) and As Green as Grass (2013).

Life

Elspeth Hallsmith was the daughter of Guthrie Hallsmith ( DSO ) and Janet Hallsmith (nee Janet Laurie). As Smith describes in the first volume of her memoir The Great Western Beach (2008), her parents had a very unhappy marriage, and the four children - apart from Elspeth himself, the three-year-old sister Pam and her twin brother Jim (born 1920) as well as the descendant Harvey (born 1931) - suffered like the mother from the violence and disregard of the tyrannical father. Elspeth was doing relatively well because she shared her father's artistic interests. This suffered from the fact that he was forced to eke out his life as a bank clerk in Newquay instead of celebrating artistic success after participating in the First World War and being a prisoner of war; Guthrie Hallsmith regularly applied to attend the Royal Academy of Arts' summer exhibitions - and was regularly turned down.

During the first twelve years of her life in Newquay, Elspeth, like her sister, had no schooling - “girls didn't matter”. This only changed after the family moved to the vicinity of Plymouth . Two years later, the father left the family after a nervous breakdown, in an interview Smith commented decades later as "wonderful".

After the outbreak of World War II , Smith initially worked as a secretary in the British War Office . In 1943, until the end of the war, she took on a job as a canal skipper ("boater") on the canal boats of the Grand Union Canal , which, despite all the associated restrictions on living standards, gave her a freedom of lifestyle that was otherwise hardly conceivable for women at the time. After the war ended, Smith got a job with a film company, where she met Laurie Lee , who was at the beginning of his career. This encounter gave direction for Smith: She took the name suggested by Lee Emma Smith as a stage name and accompanied his film team as assistant director in 1946 on a nine-month trip to India. Smith then lived in Paris and tried to establish herself as a writer: her debut novel Maidens' Trip about the experiences as a canal boatman had given her financial independence, and she was writing her second novel The Far Cry . The well-known photo of Robert Doisneau , La dactylo du Vert Galant , which shows the author sitting on the banks of the Seine with a typewriter on her knees, was made during this time.

The fact that Smith, despite her early success in the following decades, until her rediscovery of her work at the beginning of the 21st century, was barely perceived as a writer, was due to her own decision. In 1951 she married Richard Stewart-Jones (1914–1957), and in the following decades the author went on to play the role of the mother of their two children (born in 1951 and 1955). After the early death of her husband in 1957, Smith moved with their children to Radnorshire , Wales ; In 1980 she moved to the London borough of Putney , where she lived from then on. Emma Smith died at the age of 94 on April 24, 2018.

plant

Emma Smith reported in an interview shortly before her 90th birthday that she grew up as a child in a world of books and had always dreamed of becoming a writer herself. She nursed this dream during the war as a canal skipper and on the trip to India by carefully keeping a diary of her experiences. Life in Paris from 1947 onwards further strengthened her plan; she published short stories, but had to realize after half a year that the income would not be enough to survive. The salvation from this situation only brought the publication of the debut novel Maidens' Trip , which processed the experiences as a canal skipper. The book was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for young writers in 1949 , became a bestseller and allowed the author to continue to pursue her childhood dream financially. Smith herself did not see this book as a "real novel" because she had actually edited her own experiences in literary terms.

Smith's second novel, The Far Cry, based on her experiences during the India trip, appeared the following year, in German in 1951 with the title Ruf aus der Ferne , and was also successful; the work was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1950. But then Smith withdrew from the literary business and the writer's early fame quickly faded. Emma Smith herself comments on the process as follows: “Since I had now established myself in my dream job, a third bestseller should have followed. Instead, however, I got married. And for seven years [...] my typewriter was on the shelf unused. ”After her husband's death, Smith began to write again, initially successful children's books, in 1978 she also published a third novel (The Opportunity of a Lifetime) - but in the author was no longer noticed by the literary public.

This only changed due to an enthusiastic review of The Far Cry by the writer Susan Hill , who found the book at a flea market; this review led to the republication of the work more than 50 years after the first edition appeared. And although Smith had stated in the foreword to this new edition that her typewriter, the "old friend", was back on the shelf and should no longer be used, this republication encouraged her to start writing again. The two memoirs by the over 80-year-olds, The Great Western Beach (2008, about childhood in Newquay) and As Green as Grass (2013, about youth to marriage), were hailed as discoveries in Great Britain and the author came up with something new literary fame.

Awards

Publications (selection)

Novels

Autobiographies

  • The Great Western Beach . A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood Between the Wars. Bloomsbury, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-747-59591-5 .
  • As green as grass . Growing Up Before, During and After the Second World War. Bloomsbury, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-408-83563-0 .

Children's books

  • Emily. The story of a traveler. Illustrated by Katherine Wigglesworth. Thomas Nelson & Sons, London 1959.
    German: Emily . Translation from English by Marlis Pörtner, illustrations by Fred Knecht. Benziger , Zurich, Einsiedeln, Cologne 1969
  • Out of hand . Macmillan, London 1963.
    German: summer camp on the river . Translated from the American (sic!) By Dagmar von Wrangell. Engelbert-Verlag, Balve / Westphalia 1968; New edition 1980, ISBN 3-536-01534-4 .
  • Emily's Voyage . Illustrated by Margaret Gordon. Macmillan, London 1966.
    German: Emily's big journey . Translation from English by Käthe Recheis , illustrations by Fred Knecht. Benziger, Zurich, Cologne 1972, ISBN 3-545-31055-8 .
  • No way of telling . Bodley Head, London 1972, ISBN 978-0-370-01236-0 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Smith's birthday (August 21, 1923) according to information from Elizabeth Day: Emma Smith: 'I'd swap all my books for my children' , The Guardian August 18, 2013; accessed February 4, 2019.
  2. ↑ Sabine Durrant : When life was a beach , The Guardian, May 31, 2008. Names of the siblings after the entry Janet Laurie in the genealogical database Clement-Jones family ; all accessed February 4, 2019.
  3. ↑ Sabine Durrant: When life was a beach , The Guardian, May 31, 2008; accessed February 4, 2019.
  4. ↑ Patrick Gale: The Great Western Beach, by Emma Smith , The Independent , July 11, 2008; accessed February 4, 2019.
  5. ↑ s. Juliet Nicolson : Sea, sand and ice-cream , The Telegraph June 7, 2008; accessed February 4, 2019.
  6. ↑ German: Girls were unimportant; quoted from Sabine Durrant: When life was a beach , The Guardian, May 31, 2008; accessed February 4, 2019.
  7. ↑ Sabine Durrant: When life was a beach , The Guardian, May 31, 2008; accessed February 4, 2019.
  8. ↑ Jane Shilling, A girl's own adventure for a new generation , Daily Mail (Mail Online), Aug. 3, 2009; accessed February 4, 2019.
  9. ^ Sally Williams: WW2: the role of women in the Second World War , The Telegraph , September 1, 2009 (section “The canal boat woman”); accessed February 4, 2019.
  10. ↑ Elizabeth Day : Emma Smith, 'I'd swap all my books for my children,' The Guardian Aug. 18, 2013; accessed February 4, 2019.
  11. ↑ Emma Smith, The Call of Distant (PDF). Reading sample of the German translation of Far Cry , foreword by the author to the new edition 2001, p. 12f; accessed February 4, 2019.
  12. ↑ illustration La dactylo du Vert Galant , on the website of Atelier Robert Doisneau ; accessed February 4, 2019.
  13. ↑ cf. the short epilogue to this photo in an interview with Elizabeth Day: Emma Smith: 'I'd swap all my books for my children' , The Guardian, August 18, 2013; accessed February 4, 2019.
  14. ↑ Elizabeth Day: Emma Smith, 'I'd swap all my books for my children,' The Guardian Aug. 18, 2013; Life data of husband and children according to Richard Llewelyn Stewart-Jones entry in the Clement-Jones family genealogical database ; all accessed February 4, 2019.
  15. ↑ Emma Smith , author page at Bloomsbury Publishing ; accessed February 4, 2019.
  16. ^ Obituaries: Danuta Kean: Emma Smith obituary , The Guardian, April 24, 2018; Emma Smith, writer-obituary , The Telegraph, April 25, 2018; Emma Smith obituary , The Times, May 2, 2018; Christine Manby: Emma Smith: Novelist whose slim oeuvre enjoyed a renaissance half a century on , The Independant, May 6, 2018; all accessed February 4, 2019.
  17. ↑ Elizabeth Day: Emma Smith: I'd swap all my books for my children ' , The Guardian 18 August 2013; accessed February 4, 2019.
  18. ↑ Emma Smith: The Call of Distant (PDF). Reading sample of the German translation of Far Cry , foreword by the author to the new edition 2001, p. 12f; accessed February 4, 2019.
  19. ↑ Emma Smith: The Call of Distant (PDF). Reading sample of the German translation of Far Cry , foreword by the author to the new edition 2001, p. 13; accessed February 4, 2019.
  20. ^ Elizabeth Day: Emma Smith, 'I'd swap all my books for my children,' The Guardian, Aug. 18, 2013; accessed February 4, 2019.
  21. ↑ cf. for example, the reviews in the print media of The Great Western Beach (Michael Arditti: Cream teas and salad days in a vanished West Country idyll , Daily Mail (Mail Online), June 17, 2008; Juliet Nicolson : Sea, sand and ice-cream , The Telegraph June 7, 2008; Patrick Gale: The Great Western Beach, by Emma Smith , The Independent , July 11, 2008; Christian House: The world at bay , The Spectator , July 30, 2008) and on As Green as Grass ( Elizabeth Day: Emma Smith: 'I'd swap all my books for my children' , The Guardian August 18, 2013; Jane Shilling: As Green As Grass by Emma Smith: A dazzling evocation of what it is like to be young , New Statesman , Aug. 30, 2013; Christian House: Review: As Green As Grass, By Emma Smith , The Independent , Aug. 17, 2013; Giulia Rhodes: Book Review: As Green As Grass , Sunday Express (= Daily Express ), Aug. August 2013); all accessed February 4, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Smith, Emma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hallsmith, Elspeth (maiden name); Stewart-Jones, Emma
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Newquay , Cornwall
DATE OF DEATH April 24, 2018
Place of death Putney