South African writer Pauline Smith (1882-1959) is remembered for works of realistic fiction chronicling life among Afrikaner settlers in the western cape region of South Africa. Her best-known volume, the short story collection The Little Karoo (1925), was praised by the South African novelist Alan Paton in the New York Herald Tribune Book Review in 1959 as "one of the most remarkable collections of Afrikaner stories ever written."

Childhood on Two Continents

Smith was born in Oudtshoorn, South Africa, on April 2, 1882, the daughter of physician Herbert Urmson Smith and his wife, Jessy (Milne) Smith, a nurse. Her parents had immigrated to South Africa from England during the 1870s in hopes of relieving symptoms of ill health that plagued Herbert Smith. He was the first trained doctor to settle in the area and he traveled widely to treat his patients. Smith accompanied her father, learning a great deal about the landscape...