Dodie Smith
Dorothy Gladys Dodie Smith was an English childrens novelist and playwright, known best for the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians . Other works include I Capture the Castle , and The Starlight Barking . The Hundred and One Dalmatians was adapted into a 1961 Disney animated movie version. Her novel I Capture the Castle was adapted into a 2003 movie version. I160Capture the Castle was voted number 82 as one of the nations 100 bestloved novels by the British public as part of the BBCs The Big Read .
Smith was born onMay 1896 in Whitefield, near Bury in Lancashire, England. She was an only child. Her parents were Ernest and Ella Smith . Ernest was a bank manager he died during 1898, when Dodie was two years old. Dodie and her mother relocated to Old Trafford to live with her grandparents, William and Margaret Furber. Dodies childhood home, known as Kingston House, was at 609160Stretford Road. It faced the Manchester Ship Canal, and she lived with her mother, maternal grandparents, two aunts and three uncles. In her autobiography Look Back with Love , she credits her grandfather William as one of three reasons she became a playwright. He was an avid theatregoer, and they had long talks about Shakespeare and melodrama. The second reason, her uncle Harold Furber, an amateur actor, read plays with her and introduced her to contemporary drama. Thirdly, her mother had wanted to be an actress, an ambition frustrated except for walkon parts, once in the company of Sarah Bernhardt. She w
Source: Wikipedia