At the Circulating Library

Author: Alice Dew Smith

Author: Alice Dew Smith (1859–1949)

Alternate Name(s): Sarnia (pseudonym); Autolycus (pseudonym); Lloyd (maiden name)

Biography: Alice Dew Smith was born in 1859 in Auckland, New Zealand, the daughter of Rev. John Frederick Lloyd, one-time archdeacon of Waitemata. Her family return to England in the 1870s and Smith attended Newnham College, Cambridge from 1878 to 1880. While there, she befriended Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928). After university, Smith taught at Wimbledon High School, worked as a journalist (where she contributed columns to the Pall Mall Gazette as "Autolycus"), supported women's suffrage, and wrote. Her books include the nonfiction Soul Shapes (1890), the collection A White Umbrella (1895) for Unwin's Pseudonym Library, Confidences of an Amateur Gardner (1897), the novel The Diary of a Dreamer (1900), and Spiritual Gravitation (1927). In 1895, she married Albert George Dew Smith, a Cambridge-educated engineer and scientific instrument maker. The couple had no children. Her husband died in 1903 and Smith moved to Rye where she was the neighbor of Henry James. She died in 1949 in Surrey.

Author Tags:

• Journalists
• New Zealand Authors

References: British Census (1881, 1901); Times (22 November 1895)

Fiction Titles:

1. A White Umbrella and Other Stories.  1 vol.  London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895.
2. The Diary of a Dreamer.  1 vol.  London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1900.