Sheila Kaye-Smith (1887–1956)
Author of Joanna Godden
About the Author
Works by Sheila Kaye-Smith
Iron and Smoke 5 copies
Mrs. Gailey 3 copies
The happy tree 3 copies
The treasures of the snow 2 copies
Anglo-Catholicism 2 copies
The mirror of the months 2 copies
Summer holiday 1 copy
Three Ways Home 1 copy
A Day in a Woman's Life 1 copy
The hidden son 1 copy
Selina is older 1 copy
The ploughman's progress 1 copy
A wedding morn : a story 1 copy
Thomas Shetter 1 copy
Associated Works
Revolutionary Tales: African American Women's Short Stories, from the First Story to the Present (1995) — Contributor — 54 copies
Fourteen stories from one plot, based on "Mr. Fothergill's plot" (1932) — Contributor — 6 copies, 1 review
Angel of the Delta / Vessel of Clay / Speck, the Altar Boy / Cornelia Connelly (1959) — Author — 3 copies
Our Lady of Beauraing; Father Malachy's Miracle; Padre Ignacio; Quartet in Heaven (1959) — Contributor — 3 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Other names
- Kaye-Smith, Emily Sheila
- Birthdate
- 1887-02-04
- Date of death
- 1956-01-14
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
autobiographer
poet - Relationships
- Kaye, M.M. (relative)
Stern, G.B. (co-author) - Short biography
- Sheila Kaye-Smith was born in St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, Sussex, England, the daughter of a country doctor. She made her publishing debut at age 21 in 1908 with the novel The Tramping Methodist. Other novels and collections of short stories and poetry followed, including Sussex Gorse: The Story of a Fight (1916), her first critical success, Joanna Godden (1921), and The End of the House of Alard (1954). Many of her works are set in rural West Kent and East Sussex. In 1924, she married Theodore Penrose Fry, an Anglican clergyman, and five years later they both converted to the Roman Catholic faith. She published more than 40 books in her career, including three volumes of autobiography, two biographical studies (with G.B. Stern) of Jane Austen, and several other works of nonfiction.
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- St Leonards -on-Sea, Sussex, England, UK
- Places of residence
- St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, England, UK
London, England, UK
Northiam, Sussex, England, UK - Place of death
- Northiam, Sussex, England, UK
- Burial location
- St Teresa of Lisieux, Northiam, Sussex, England, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- Sussex, England, UK
Members
Reviews
Reading this is like being in a book club all by myself, with two invisible members from the 1940s.
Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern write whimsical and interesting essays on various aspects of Jane Austen's novels.
In this second volume, they tackle family life, letter-writing, questions of health, characters with no speaking parts, and other subjects.
They even dally with writing brief scenes for some of the novels seven years after "the end." It's all very charming and enjoyable, and much show more more satisfying than the current rage for fan-fiction and the Hollywoodization of Jane Austen.
Fun stuff! show less
Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern write whimsical and interesting essays on various aspects of Jane Austen's novels.
In this second volume, they tackle family life, letter-writing, questions of health, characters with no speaking parts, and other subjects.
They even dally with writing brief scenes for some of the novels seven years after "the end." It's all very charming and enjoyable, and much show more more satisfying than the current rage for fan-fiction and the Hollywoodization of Jane Austen.
Fun stuff! show less
Part of the spoils of this year's Trinity Second-Hand Book Sale. I got it for only 50c; which, considering that it's hardback and a first edition, makes it rather undervalued, I think. It's a collection of essays about Jane Austen's six main novels, written by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern, who were quite popular novelists in their day.
It was written in 1943, which shows both in references in the text, and in the way they analyse the novels. That it's old-fashioned is not necessarily a show more bad thing - though there is an awful lot I would disagree with and find wrong, particularly with regards to Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and the Vexed Question of Colonel Brandon - because it's interesting to see how opinions of Austen's works have changed over time. Interesting to see how other things have changed, too; I was vastly amused at one section, wherein G.B. Stern (who came from an upper-class English background) declared that Lady Catherine de Bourgh's character was a failure because it was impossible to imagine that any great lady of the aristocracy could ever be so rude. I both boggled and laughed at that, because I go to school with quite a few offspring of that particular social class, both English and Irish, and no. Just no. Being a countess doesn't absolve you from being an ass. Lady Catherine is terrifyingly realistic to me. show less
It was written in 1943, which shows both in references in the text, and in the way they analyse the novels. That it's old-fashioned is not necessarily a show more bad thing - though there is an awful lot I would disagree with and find wrong, particularly with regards to Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and the Vexed Question of Colonel Brandon - because it's interesting to see how opinions of Austen's works have changed over time. Interesting to see how other things have changed, too; I was vastly amused at one section, wherein G.B. Stern (who came from an upper-class English background) declared that Lady Catherine de Bourgh's character was a failure because it was impossible to imagine that any great lady of the aristocracy could ever be so rude. I both boggled and laughed at that, because I go to school with quite a few offspring of that particular social class, both English and Irish, and no. Just no. Being a countess doesn't absolve you from being an ass. Lady Catherine is terrifyingly realistic to me. show less
I’ve been wanting to read more of Sheila Kaye-Smith’s work for ages, but because I had a huge choice, after finding what must have once been somebody’s prized collection in a book sale, I wasted far too much time picking books up and down, not quite able to decide which one to read first.
In the end, a beloved author made my mind up for me.
“Have been reading in the half hour before I go to sleep ‘The End of the House of Alard’. Sheila Kaye-Smith is a favorite of mine. She reminds show more me of George Eliot. But her work is tinged – I had almost said tainted – with the pessimism of most present day writers of power. They reflect their age. It is hard to be hopeful today when one looks at the weltering world.”
(From the journal of Lucy Maud Montgomery, November 22, 1923)
I tend to agree. The comparison is a little flattering, of course it is, but it goes some way to balancing out the unfairness of Sheila Kaye-Smith being bracketed with many lesser rural novelists of the same period. She was a countrywoman, and that shows in her books, but she does much, much more than tell tales of country folk.
The Alard family could trace their ancestors back to medieval times, but their fortunes were fading. Lord and Lady Alard lived in their grand house, refusing to recognise that the world had changes, and believing that if only their children would make good marriage fortune would favour them and things would – things must – continue as they always had.
There were three sons and three daughters.
Peter became heir when his brother was killed in the was, and found himself caught between marrying for love and marrying for the money he knew the estate desperately needed; George had followed one of the classic paths for a second son, joining the priesthood and settling into the family living; Gervase, the youngest brother believed that the world was changing, decided that he must break with tradition and follow his own calling, even though he knew his family would disapprove …
Doris, the eldest daughter, had never married, telling herself that her parents needed her at home, and becoming set in her – and their – ways; Mary had married but she was unhappy, wanting to leave her husband but aware of the consequences and the social disgrace would follow; and Jenny was young and headstrong, she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes her sisters made, she was going to follow her heart …
The story moves back and forth between them all, touching on so many themes: family, love, duty, tradition, society, change, faith. There is much about faith – as there is in most if not all of Sheila Kaye-Smiths’s books – thoughtfully woven onto the story, a natural part of many of her characters lives. Details of lives lived on a country estate are woven in as naturally. I never for one moment doubted that the author knew – and believed – everything that she wrote about.
The story touches on Judaism as well as Christianity. Peter’s bride, Vera, is Jewish and it is mentioned often – Sheila Kaye-Smith writes beautifully, and she can be wonderfully subtle, but occasionally she labours a point. It is to her great credit though that Vera takes a great pride in her Jewishness, seeing it as something that makes her special, and that is never questioned. There were a few small details that made me suspect that her character was inspired by the author’s friend and sometime co-writer, G B Stern.
Above all this is a story of characters and relationships. Each and every character is beautifully drawn, complex and fully realised; the multitude of different relationships between them are caught perfectly too. They all lived and breathed, but it was in the dialogues that they were most alive. I remember Jenny, stridently making her case for doing just what she wanted to do; Gervase and George talking about faith; Mary quietly explaining why she couldn’t bear to go on with her husband ….
I was captivated. but I have to acknowledge there was something missing. A little more variation, maybe some outside influence – the story seemed to be set in a very closed world – might have made this a great book instead of a very good one. And it maybe needed to be a bigger book set over a rather longer period to allow the characters their stories to shine as brightly as they might.
The characters in the foreground needed to come forward a little. I loved Stella and how she coped when Peter made her decision, and her father who did his best to support her, even though he didn’t quite undestand. Their was as lovely, and believable, a father-daughter realtionship as I can ever remember reading. And the characters who were a little further back deserved more space. At first George seemed uninteresting, but when he spoke about faith, when he was called on as a priest, he came to life and I wished that I could have known him a little better.
This is one of those maddening books that I loved, but at the same time I wished I could have loved it even more. It was a very good book that might have been a great book. And the great book it might have been would made that comparison with Middlemarch entirely right.
And there’s just one more thing I must take issue with: the title. The fact the this was ‘The End of the House of Alard’ made the outcome of certain events rather predictable, and sorrow rather inevitable. The ending veered dangerously close to melodrama, but it was saved by the reactions of those left to cope and carry on. show less
In the end, a beloved author made my mind up for me.
“Have been reading in the half hour before I go to sleep ‘The End of the House of Alard’. Sheila Kaye-Smith is a favorite of mine. She reminds show more me of George Eliot. But her work is tinged – I had almost said tainted – with the pessimism of most present day writers of power. They reflect their age. It is hard to be hopeful today when one looks at the weltering world.”
(From the journal of Lucy Maud Montgomery, November 22, 1923)
I tend to agree. The comparison is a little flattering, of course it is, but it goes some way to balancing out the unfairness of Sheila Kaye-Smith being bracketed with many lesser rural novelists of the same period. She was a countrywoman, and that shows in her books, but she does much, much more than tell tales of country folk.
The Alard family could trace their ancestors back to medieval times, but their fortunes were fading. Lord and Lady Alard lived in their grand house, refusing to recognise that the world had changes, and believing that if only their children would make good marriage fortune would favour them and things would – things must – continue as they always had.
There were three sons and three daughters.
Peter became heir when his brother was killed in the was, and found himself caught between marrying for love and marrying for the money he knew the estate desperately needed; George had followed one of the classic paths for a second son, joining the priesthood and settling into the family living; Gervase, the youngest brother believed that the world was changing, decided that he must break with tradition and follow his own calling, even though he knew his family would disapprove …
Doris, the eldest daughter, had never married, telling herself that her parents needed her at home, and becoming set in her – and their – ways; Mary had married but she was unhappy, wanting to leave her husband but aware of the consequences and the social disgrace would follow; and Jenny was young and headstrong, she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes her sisters made, she was going to follow her heart …
The story moves back and forth between them all, touching on so many themes: family, love, duty, tradition, society, change, faith. There is much about faith – as there is in most if not all of Sheila Kaye-Smiths’s books – thoughtfully woven onto the story, a natural part of many of her characters lives. Details of lives lived on a country estate are woven in as naturally. I never for one moment doubted that the author knew – and believed – everything that she wrote about.
The story touches on Judaism as well as Christianity. Peter’s bride, Vera, is Jewish and it is mentioned often – Sheila Kaye-Smith writes beautifully, and she can be wonderfully subtle, but occasionally she labours a point. It is to her great credit though that Vera takes a great pride in her Jewishness, seeing it as something that makes her special, and that is never questioned. There were a few small details that made me suspect that her character was inspired by the author’s friend and sometime co-writer, G B Stern.
Above all this is a story of characters and relationships. Each and every character is beautifully drawn, complex and fully realised; the multitude of different relationships between them are caught perfectly too. They all lived and breathed, but it was in the dialogues that they were most alive. I remember Jenny, stridently making her case for doing just what she wanted to do; Gervase and George talking about faith; Mary quietly explaining why she couldn’t bear to go on with her husband ….
I was captivated. but I have to acknowledge there was something missing. A little more variation, maybe some outside influence – the story seemed to be set in a very closed world – might have made this a great book instead of a very good one. And it maybe needed to be a bigger book set over a rather longer period to allow the characters their stories to shine as brightly as they might.
The characters in the foreground needed to come forward a little. I loved Stella and how she coped when Peter made her decision, and her father who did his best to support her, even though he didn’t quite undestand. Their was as lovely, and believable, a father-daughter realtionship as I can ever remember reading. And the characters who were a little further back deserved more space. At first George seemed uninteresting, but when he spoke about faith, when he was called on as a priest, he came to life and I wished that I could have known him a little better.
This is one of those maddening books that I loved, but at the same time I wished I could have loved it even more. It was a very good book that might have been a great book. And the great book it might have been would made that comparison with Middlemarch entirely right.
And there’s just one more thing I must take issue with: the title. The fact the this was ‘The End of the House of Alard’ made the outcome of certain events rather predictable, and sorrow rather inevitable. The ending veered dangerously close to melodrama, but it was saved by the reactions of those left to cope and carry on. show less
The eldest child of a Sussex farm labourer and his wife, from an early age Susan Spray is sent to earn her keep in the fields, her parents' dreams of an education for this strangely pretty and graceful daughter shattered by the brutal exigencies of life under the Corn Laws. At the age of six, Susan is caught in a terrifying thunderstorm while working in the fields, and commits the unforgiveable sin of deserting her post to run home. Confronted by her furious parents and imminent punishment, show more Susan blurts out that she has had a vision of God... The pleasant notoriety that Susan's experience earns her amongst the members of her parents' sect, the Colgate Brethren, is soon no more than a distant memory. Orphaned, the Spray children become inmates of a workhouse, finally separated when the two oldest girls, Susan and Tamar, are sent to labour on a farm. As Susan grows, so does her desire to escape "the common lot of women"; to be different, special; and, armed with tales of her visions and prophetic dreams, she pursues her ambition of being not just a member of the Colgate congregation, but its leader - a preacher...
Sheila Kaye-Smith is an author best known for her heartfelt tales of the Sussex countryside, and her love of her native soil pervades the early stages of her 1931 novel, Susan Spray, where the beauties of the natural world and the simple comfort of the soil itself acts as a balm even against the desperate, killing poverty of agricultural life in the 1830s. Indeed, a love of country life may ultimately be the one thing that this work's author and main character have in common. Susan Spray is a very interesting novel, but also a very uncomfortable one. There is a strange but unmistakable sense in this book that Sheila Kaye-Smith and her creation were at war with one another - and an even stranger sense that, in the end, Susan was the stronger of the two.
Although Kaye-Smith understands and depicts her title character with devastating acuteness, it does not seem that she is much in sympathy with Susan or her ambitions. And in fact, Susan is not an easy person to like: with her vanity, her egotism, her capacity for self-delusion and her paper-tiger jealousy of her sister Tamar, it would be easy enough for the reader to hope for and take pleasure in the various falls from grace that punctuate Susan's pursuit of leadership amongst her small religious community.
It is the man who will become Susan's second husband, Charles Clarabut, who provides the touchstone of Susan's character, finding it by accident during their first quarrel and separation, then returning to it deliberately, as a weapon, during the final meltdown of their marriage and their brutal, mutual deconstruction. I forgot how I first met you, travelling first class with a third-class ticket, which is what you've been going ever since, Susan throws at Charles, who retorts with the single word that above all others, cuts Susan to her very soul: humbug. And clearly, Susan is a humbug. Her religiously-tinged dreams are real enough, but her interpretation of them is entirely self-serving; the "visions" with which she impresses and frightens the Brethren are always wonderfully convenient; and her goal of leadership in her community is far more about her own aggrandisement than about serving God.
But time has been curiously kind to Susan Spray. We get the impression, in reading, that Sheila Kaye-Smith disapproved of Susan's dogged determination to avoid "the common lot of women", or perhaps considered it an impossible dream: she depicts sexuality here as a negative force that must inevitably drag a woman down to earth. But Susan herself won't accept this - and her furious cry to an uncomprehending world, why should it matter that she is woman and not a man, resonates today in a way that Kaye-Smith can hardly have anticipated. Consequently, modern readers may well be inclined to look more kindly than they were intended to upon Susan's "unwomanly" ambitions, and even the ruthless, sometimes dishonest means that she adopts to achieve them. Whatever else we doubt about Susan, we cannot doubt her perception: though a woman, low-born and incompletely educated, she unerringly identifies the one path in life that will allow her to escape her alternative fate - and clings to it. There is, as I have said, a strange sense in this novel of an ongoing battle for dominance between author and character; and while Sheila Kaye-Smith does deliver one final, stunning blow, it is unlikely that the reader will be sorry that Susan nevertheless gets her moment in the sun. show less
Sheila Kaye-Smith is an author best known for her heartfelt tales of the Sussex countryside, and her love of her native soil pervades the early stages of her 1931 novel, Susan Spray, where the beauties of the natural world and the simple comfort of the soil itself acts as a balm even against the desperate, killing poverty of agricultural life in the 1830s. Indeed, a love of country life may ultimately be the one thing that this work's author and main character have in common. Susan Spray is a very interesting novel, but also a very uncomfortable one. There is a strange but unmistakable sense in this book that Sheila Kaye-Smith and her creation were at war with one another - and an even stranger sense that, in the end, Susan was the stronger of the two.
Although Kaye-Smith understands and depicts her title character with devastating acuteness, it does not seem that she is much in sympathy with Susan or her ambitions. And in fact, Susan is not an easy person to like: with her vanity, her egotism, her capacity for self-delusion and her paper-tiger jealousy of her sister Tamar, it would be easy enough for the reader to hope for and take pleasure in the various falls from grace that punctuate Susan's pursuit of leadership amongst her small religious community.
It is the man who will become Susan's second husband, Charles Clarabut, who provides the touchstone of Susan's character, finding it by accident during their first quarrel and separation, then returning to it deliberately, as a weapon, during the final meltdown of their marriage and their brutal, mutual deconstruction. I forgot how I first met you, travelling first class with a third-class ticket, which is what you've been going ever since, Susan throws at Charles, who retorts with the single word that above all others, cuts Susan to her very soul: humbug. And clearly, Susan is a humbug. Her religiously-tinged dreams are real enough, but her interpretation of them is entirely self-serving; the "visions" with which she impresses and frightens the Brethren are always wonderfully convenient; and her goal of leadership in her community is far more about her own aggrandisement than about serving God.
But time has been curiously kind to Susan Spray. We get the impression, in reading, that Sheila Kaye-Smith disapproved of Susan's dogged determination to avoid "the common lot of women", or perhaps considered it an impossible dream: she depicts sexuality here as a negative force that must inevitably drag a woman down to earth. But Susan herself won't accept this - and her furious cry to an uncomprehending world, why should it matter that she is woman and not a man, resonates today in a way that Kaye-Smith can hardly have anticipated. Consequently, modern readers may well be inclined to look more kindly than they were intended to upon Susan's "unwomanly" ambitions, and even the ruthless, sometimes dishonest means that she adopts to achieve them. Whatever else we doubt about Susan, we cannot doubt her perception: though a woman, low-born and incompletely educated, she unerringly identifies the one path in life that will allow her to escape her alternative fate - and clings to it. There is, as I have said, a strange sense in this novel of an ongoing battle for dominance between author and character; and while Sheila Kaye-Smith does deliver one final, stunning blow, it is unlikely that the reader will be sorry that Susan nevertheless gets her moment in the sun. show less
Lists
Art of Reading (1)
Women in War (1)
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 54
- Also by
- 11
- Members
- 613
- Popularity
- #41,001
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 10
- ISBNs
- 61
