Elizabeth Smart
From The Canadian Encyclopedia, "In 1945, a slim work with a long title — By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept — was published in England by Elizabeth Smart, an unknown Canadian writer living in London. The book was based on Smart’s love affair with the poet George Barker, and Smart’s mother used her influence with Prime Minister Mackenzie King to have the book banned from Canada. However, it was hailed as a masterpiece of poetic prose when it was later republished in paperback. In 2021, Marie Frankland’s French translation of Smart’s The Collected Poems won a Governor General’s Literary Award.'
Elizabeth Smart in Kingsmere, Quebec, 1930.
Elizabeth Smart in Kingsmere, Quebec, 1930.
Image: Graham Spry/Library and Archives Canada/e003641903.
Early Life and Education
Elizabeth Smart was born into a prominent Ottawa family. She was educated at Hatfield Hall, a private school in Cobourg, Ontario. Although Smart was never without a notebook and thought of being a writer at a young age, piano study took her to London at the age of 19. Soon realizing that she would never be satisfied by the piano alone, and wanting to write seriously, she gave up the piano and returned to Canada. She worked for the Ottawa Journal writing society news.
Following this brief stint, Smart travelled extensively through the 1930s, living a peripatetic and at times bohemian life. During this time, she became acquainted with the poems of George Barker and sight unseen decided she would marry him. Eventually, through her contact with Lawrence Durrell, she met Barker. Though she never married him (he was married and Catholic), she did have four of Barker’s children.
During the Second World War, Smart worked briefly at the British Embassy in Washington until it was obvious that she was pregnant with her second child. She then moved back to England, where she worked to support herself and her family. For the next two decades she wrote advertising copy, worked for Queen as literary editor and for Tatler and House and Garden magazines."