Elizabeth Smart Profile and Full Biography
Born in Ottawa, Ontario, she was the daughter of a lawyer who was a member of the Anglo-Canadian social establishment. She attended Hatfield Hall, a private school, and at eighteen travelled to England to study piano under Katharine Goodson. When she returned to Canada in 1933, she briefly joined the staff of the Ottawa Journal, writing society notes. In 1937, she spent six months as the private secretary to Mrs Alfred Watts, head of the Associated Country Women of the World, on a world tour to promote the organization. With the ambition to become a writer, she submitted poems to Lawrence Durrell's Paris magazine Booster and, at his suggestion, began a literary correspondence with the English poet George Barker. While staying at a writers' colony in Big Sur, California, in the fall of 1940, she secured passage for Barker and his wife to the United States. A passionate love affair ensued. He became the father of her four children. In 1941 Smart travelled alone to Pender Harbour,...