Sheila Kaye-Smith Papers

The English writer Sheila Kaye-Smith was the author of many novels set in the countryside of Sussex and Kent. Sisters St. Helene Guthrie, Antonine O'Brien, and Alice (Maris Stella) Smith, CSJ all became friends of Kaye-Smith while they were in England studying at Oxford, circa 1928. Kaye-Smith's husband, Penrose Fry, also a writer, was at the time an Anglican clergyman. In 1929 Kaye-Smith and Fry converted to Catholicism. They moved from London to Northiam in Sussex, where they established a Catholic chapel named for St. Theresa of Liseux. The couple visited the College of St. Catherine in March 1935, where Kaye-Smith gave a talk titled "Pioneer Women Novelists."