Dodie Smith

Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith (3 May 1896 – 24 November 1990) was an English children's novelist and playwright, known best for the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include I Capture the Castle (1948), and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 Disney animated movie version. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 movie version. I Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as "one of the nation's 100 best-loved novels" by the British public as part of the BBC's The Big Read (2003).

Biography

Early life

Smith was born on 3 May 1896 in Whitefield, near Bury in Lancashire, England. She was an only child. Her parents were Ernest and Ella Smith (née Furber). Ernest was a bank manager; he died during 1898, when Dodie was two years old. Dodie and her mother relocated to Old Trafford to live with her grandparents, William and Margaret Furber. Dodie's childhood home, known as Kingston House, was at 609 Stretford Road. It faced the Manchester Ship Canal, and she lived with her mother, maternal grandparents, two aunts and three uncles. In her autobiography Look Back with Love (1974), she credits her grandfather William as one of three reasons she became a playwright. He was an avid theatregoer, and they had long talks about Shakespeare and melodrama. The second reason, her uncle Harold Furber, an amateur actor, read plays with her and introduced her to contemporary drama. Thirdly, her mother had wanted to be an actress, an ambition frustrated except for walk-on parts, once in the company of Sarah Bernhardt. She wrote her first play at the age of ten, and she began acting in minor roles during her teens at the Manchester Athenaeum Dramatic Society. Presently there is a blue plaque commemorating the building where Dorothy grew up. The formative years of Dorothy's childhood were spent at this house.