Kaye-Smith, Sheila (1887–1956)

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Kaye-Smith, Sheila (1887–1956)

English novelist and poet known for her Sussex tales. Name variations: Mrs. Penrose Fry. Born in St. Leonard's-on-Sea, Sussex, England, on February 4, 1887; died near Rye, Sussex, England, on January 14, 1956; daughter of Edward Kaye-Smith (a physician and surgeon); her mother, whose maiden name was de la Condamine, was his second wife; attended Hastings and St. Leonard's Ladies' College; married Theodore Penrose Fry, later known as Sir Penrose Fry (a minister turned farmer); no children.

Selected works—novels:

The Tramping Methodist (1908); Starbrace (1909); Spell Land (1911); Isle of Thorns (1913); Three Against the World (1913); Sussex Gorse (1916); The Challenge to Sirius (1917); Little England (1918); Tamarisk Town (1919); Green Apple Harvest (1920); Joanna Godden (1921); The End of the House of Alard (1923); The George and the Crown (1925); Joanna Godden Married (1927); Iron and Smoke (1928); The Village Doctor (1929); Shepherds in Sackcloth (1930); The History of Susan Spray (1931); Gallybird (1932); The Ploughman's Progress (1933); The Children's Summer (1933); Superstition Corner (1934); Selina is Older (1935); Rose Deeprose (1936); Faithful Stranger (1937); The Valiant Woman (1938); Gipsy Waggon (1939); Ember Lane (1940); Tambourine, Trumpet and Drum (1943); Summer Holiday (1947); The Lardners and the Laurelwoods (1948); Treasures of the Snow (1950); The Hidden Son (1952); Mrs. Gailey (1953); The View from the Parsonage (1954).

Nonfiction:

John Galsworthy (1915); Mirror of the Months (1925); Anglo-Catholicism (1926); Three Ways Home (1937); (with G.B. Stern) Talking of Jane Austen (1944); Kitchen Fugue (1945); (with G.B. Stern) More Talk of Jane Austen (1950); Quartet in Heaven (1952); The Weald of Sussex and Kent (1953); All the Books of My Life (1956). Poetry and plays: Willow's Forge (1914); Saints in Sussex (1926); Songs, Late and Early (1931).

English writer Sheila Kaye-Smith was born in St. Leonard's-on-Sea in 1887 and raised in the beautiful countryside of Sussex, which later became the setting of most of her novels. The daughter of a prominent physician, she was well educated at home and also attended Hastings and St. Leonard's Ladies' College. In 1924, she married T. Penrose Fry, who was then vicar of St. Leonard's but later served churches in Nor-land and in London, where the couple lived for a short time. In 1929, however, they converted to Roman Catholicism, and Fry resigned his ordination and went to work on a farm that the couple purchased in Northiam, Sussex ("Little Doucegrove"). Kaye-Smith combined her prolific writing career with her duties as a farmer's wife. The author had no children but doted on her friends and relatives, as well a series of pet cats. Upon her death in 1956, Kaye-Smith was buried near the little chapel she had built on the grounds of the farm.

Kaye-Smith's first work of fiction, The Tramping Methodist, was published in 1908, when she was 21. Several novels followed as well as a book of verse, but it was her novel Sussex Gorse (1916), that established her as a writer. Considered by some to be her best work, it concerns an ambitious landowner who exploits the people around him to expand his landholdings. Love of the land is also the dominant theme in all of the 31 novels that followed, and all have strong religious overtones. Those of note include Little England (1918), Green Apple Harvest (1920), and Joanna Godden (1921), which was later made into a film starring Googie Withers and Jean Kent. In addition to her poetry and novels, Kaye-Smith was known for two studies of Jane Austen written in collaboration with novelist G.B. Stern : Talking of Jane Austen (1943) and More Talk about Jane Austen (1950). Kaye-Smith also wrote a three-volume autobiography, Three Ways Home (1937), an informal cookbook-autobiography, Kitchen-Fugue (1945), and a memoir describing her reading at important junctures of her life, All the Books of My Life (1956).

As a novelist, Kaye-Smith may have offered her readers too much of a good thing. On the one hand, she was praised for her realistic depiction of the rural countryside and its people, as well as her handling of rustic speech; on the other, she was criticized as repetitive and overly regional. An appraisal by Mary Stack reflects the often ambiguous feelings among the critics. "In spite of brilliance in characterization, she is not a novelist of character, any more than she is a novelist of local color. She is, rather, a novelist with a deep understanding of life and love, with a rich feeling for the land.… She has the power of presenting all this in prose that is often beautiful and sometimes masterly. And yet… she has all gifts in abundance but greatness is excepted."