Juvenilia: Early Writing of Elizabeth Smart

Mary Jane Starr was with the National Library of Canada in Ottawa.

Prior to her death, Elizabeth Smart assisted Alice Van Wart in editing her journals, which were published as Necessary Secrets in 1986. In Juvenilia, Van Wart concentrated on the earliest writings of Elizabeth Smart, material that had been excluded from this first book. Juvenilia contains about twenty pieces which Van Wart selected from Smart’s first journals covering the period 1926 to 1933. Included are stories, plays, satires, and poems. These pieces are complemented with half-a-dozen letters written home from England and Germany between 1931 and 1933.

Elizabeth Smart’s interest in the verbal expression of emotions and ideas is evident in her earliest work, as are her fertile imagination and perceptive eye. While she competently handled an advanced vocabulary in the story of two bachelors, Messieurs Jayde and Green, and their quest for a dictionary, it was, ironically, a child-like phrase such as “a chokey feeling came up inside her” in “The Little House” that was more effective, and more honest. The earliest work is sprinkled with asides to the reader. As she developed, Smart became less self-conscious and more interested in experimenting with various forms, such as the sonnet. She used this form, traditionally associated with love, to describe the difficulty of removing food from between teeth.

Elizabeth Smart’s focus changed through her teens, with pure imagination giving way to maturer themes and social commentary. Yet her sensibility was evident throughout. If there is a hint of the precocious, it relates to her capability to convey her thoughts and ideas so effectively at such an early age.

The reproductions of pages from her journals and the photographs of the author and her friends and family enhance this small, well-chosen, and revealing collection of the early work of Elizabeth Smart.