Elizabeth Smart (1913 - 1986)

• novelist, poet
• born 1913, Ottawa, Ontario, to a prominent family
• educated at private schools in Canada and for a year at King's College, University of London
• while browsing in a London bookshop she found a book of poetry by George Barker, and fell in love with him through his poems
• she met him and flew him and his wife to the United States, beginning an intense and tragic love affair
• they never married, but she bore Barker four children
• their relationship provided the inspiration for her poetic prose novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945)
• this novel, which is considered her masterpiece, was written while she lived in British Columbia
• during World War II she worked in Washington D.C., and for the Ministry of Defense in London
• after the war she supported herself and her children with journalism and advertising work
• in 1963 she became literary and associate editor of Queen magazine
• in 1977 she published a poetry collection A Bonus, and her second novel The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals
• later dropped out of the literary world to live quietly in Suffolk, England
• autobiographies:
  • Elizabeth Smart edited by Christina Burridge (William Hoffer/Tanks, 1987)
  • Juvenilia : early writings of Elizabeth Smart edited by Alice Van Wart (Coach House Press, 1987)
  • Necessary secrets : the journals of Elizabeth Smart edited by Alice Van Wart (Deneau, 1986)
  • On the side of the angels : the second volume of the journals of Elizabeth Smart edited by Alice Van Wart
• biography: By heart: Elizabeth Smart, a life by Rosemary Sullivan (Viking, 1991)
• film: Elizabeth Smart: On The Side Of The Angels (60 min.,1991) directed and written by Maya Gallus, features Jackie Burroughs as Elizabeth Smart, narrated by Michael Ondaatje

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