Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith.[1] She was called "Peggy" within her family, but acquired the name "Stevie" as a young woman when she was riding in the park with a friend who said that she reminded him of the jockey Steve Donaghue. Her father was a shipping agent, a business that he had inherited from his father. As the company and his marriage began to fall apart, he ran away to sea and Smith saw very little of her father after that.[2] He appeared occasionally on 24-hour shore leave and sent very brief postcards ("Off to Valparaiso, Love Daddy"). When she was three years old she moved with her mother and sister to Palmers Green in North London where Smith would live until her death in 1971.

وقد مقتت والدها لتخليه عن العائلة ولاحقا عندما مرضت والدتها جاءت خالتها للعيش معهم والتي كانت تلقب بالحالة الاسد وقد عملت هذه الخالة على تنشاة الشاعرة وأختها واصبحت اهم شخصيه في حياتهم ، وقد كانت هذه الخالة من انصار الحركة النسائية وكانت تدعي انها لا تمتلك الصبر على الرجال .
She resented the fact that her father had abandoned his family. Later, when her mother became ill, her aunt Madge Spear (whom Smith called "The Lion Aunt") came to live with them, raised Smith and her elder sister Molly and became the most important person in Smith's life. Spear was a feminist who claimed to have "no patience" with men and, as Smith wrote, "she also had 'no patience' with Hitler".

وقد نشات الشاعرة وأختها في منزل ليس فيه رجال ولذلك اكتسبتا استقلالية في الشخصية . وعندما كانت في الخامسة مرضت وارسلت الى مستشفي حيث أمضت ثلاث سنوات هناك .
Smith and Molly were raised without men and thus became attached to their own independence, in contrast to what Smith described as the typical Victorian family atmosphere of "father knows best". When Smith was five she developed tubercular peritonitis and was sent to a sanatorium near Broadstairs, Kent, where she remained for three years.

وقد بينت ان انشغالها بالموت بدا وهي في سن السابعة عندما أصيبت بكآبة شديدة بسبب أبعادها عن والدتها . وقد شغلتها افكار الخوف والموت واستوحت منها الكثير من القصائد . وقد خفف عنها انشغالها بالموت اثناء موجات الكآبة التي ظلت تصيبها طوال حياتها وتقول ان ذلك منعها من الانتحار . وقد كتبت في عدة قصائد ان الموت هو الاله الوحيد الذي يأتي عندما يطلب منه ذلك وقد ماتت والدتها وهي في سن السادسة عشره وقد عانت طوال حياتها من عصبية حادة تمثل في خجل وحساسية مفرطه
She related that her preoccupation with death began when she was seven, at a time when she was very distressed at being sent away from her mother.[2] Death and fear fascinated her and provide the subjects of many of her poems.[4] When suffering from the depression to which she was subject all her life she was so consoled by the thought of death as a release that, as she put it, she did not have to commit suicide. She wrote in several poems that death was "the only god who must come when he is called". Her mother died when Smith was 16 and suffered through her life from an acute nervousness, described as a mix of shyness and intense sensitivity.[4