INTRODUCED BY RACHEL COOKE

‘Virginia Woolf’s roving consciousness lies behind the prose in Novel on Yellow Paper, but the tone owes more to Dorothy Parker … When first published in 1936, it overnight turned Smith into a celebrity … the subversiveness of this novel has never lost its appeal, its greatness lying in its exuberant celebration of the uncircumscribed spirit’ - Frances Spalding, Independent

Stevie’s alter ego Pompey is young, in love and working as a secretary for the magnificent Sir Phoebus Ullwater. In between making coffee and typing letters for Sir Phoebus, Pompey scribbles down - on yellow office paper - her quirky thoughts. Her flights of imagination take in Euripedes, sex education, Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church, shattering conventions in their wake.