Like her creator, the engaging heroine of Stevie Smith's 1936 Novel on Yellow Paper works as a private secretary. But at heart she is a poet who dreams of publication. In the meantime Pompey (born Patience, and called Patty by her irritating mother) offsets the "orgy of boredom" that is her day job by typing on yellow paper, the better to distinguish her work from her boss's correspondence, which goes out on blue letterhead. Her Novel comprises poetry scraps, a running

—Lynn Peril