Доди Смит: Жизнь и творчество английской писательницы

English novelist and playwright

Dorothy Gladys "Dodie" Smith (3 May 1896 – 24 November 1990) was an English novelist and playwright. She is best known for writing I Capture the Castle (1948) and the children's novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956). Other works include Dear Octopus (1938) and The Starlight Barking (1967). The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 animated film and a 1996 live action film, both produced by Disney. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 film. 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).

Smith was born on 3 May 1896 in a house named Stoneycroft (number 118) on Bury New Road, 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 in 1898 when Dodie was two years old. Dodie and her mother moved to Old Trafford to live with her grandparents, William and Margaret Furber. Dodie's childhood home, Kingston House, was at 609 Stretford Road, and faced the Manchester Ship Canal. She lived with her mother, maternal grandparents, two aunts and three uncles.

Even though Smith had sold a movie script, Schoolgirl Rebels, using the pseudonym Charles Henry Percy, She wrote her first staged play, Autumn Crocus, in 1931 using the pseudonym C. L. Anthony. Its success, and the discovery of her identity by journalists, inspired the newspaper headline, "Shopgirl Writes Play". The show starred Fay Compton and Francis Lederer. ), who had also worked at Heal's and had become her longtime friend and business manager. The two married in 1939. She would not have another play staged in London until 1952, though Lovers and Friends did play at the Plymouth Theatre in 1943. The show featured Katharine Cornell and Raymond Massey.

During the 1940s Smith and Beesley relocated to the United States to avoid difficulties due to his being a conscientious objector. Smith's personal papers are housed in Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, and include manuscripts, photographs, artwork and correspondence (including letters from Christopher Isherwood and John Gielgud).

Smith and Beesley loved dogs and kept Dalmatians as pets; at one point the couple had nine of them. The first was named Pongo, which became the name Smith used for the canine protagonist of her The Hundred and One Dalmatians novel. Smith had the idea for the novel when one of her friends observed a group of her Dalmatians and said "Those dogs would make a lovely fur coat". The novel has been adapted by Disney twice, an animated film in 1961 called One Hundred and One Dalmatians and a live action film in 1996 called 101 Dalmatians. Although both of the Disney films spawned a sequel film, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure and 102 Dalmatians, neither sequel has any connection to Smith's own sequel, The Starlight Barking.