Royde-Smith, Naomi Gwladys (c. 1880–1964)
Royde-Smith, Naomi Gwladys (c. 1880–1964)
English writer. Name variations: Naomi Gwladys Royde Smith; Mrs. Ernest Milton. Born Naomi Gwladys Smith in Llanwrst, Wales, c. 1880 (some sources cite 1875 but birth date unknown); died July 28, 1964, in a London hospital; eldest dau. of Ann Daisy (Williams) Smith and Michael Holroyd Smith; educated at private school in Geneva, Switzerland; m. Ernest Milton (British actor), 1926.
As the successful literary editor of the Westminister Gazette (1912–22) and a dashing host of literary gatherings, was enormously influential; adopted novelist Rose Macaulay as her protégée; wrote over 40 books, including many well-received novels which gently satirized class and gender, such as The Tortoiseshell Cat (1925) and The Delicate Situation (1931), a historical novel set in the Victorian 1840s; detailed her childhood in novel In the Wood, published in US as Children in the Wood.
See also Women in World History.