Novel on Yellow Paper

I am a forward-thinking girl, and don't stay where I am. 'Left right, be bright.'<p>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.</p><p>When Smith first tried to get her poems published in 1935, she was told by a publisher to “go away and write a novel.” <em>Novel on Yellow Paper</em>, 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” (<em>The London Times Literary Supplement</em>, 1936).</p>