On leaving school, Royde-Smith moved to Chelsea and began to write for the
Westminster Gazette (also known as the
Saturday Westminster Gazette), a small magazine that enjoyed visibility beyond its size due in part to the patronage of the
Fifth Earl of Rosebery. Royde-Smith rose from being a contributor to the editor of the "problems and prizes" page, a responsibility she shared with her sister Leslie (who would marry
George Maitland Lloyd Davies). She moved on to writing drama reviews and then, in 1912, became the
Westminster Gazette's literary editor, the first woman to attain this position. As editor, she championed the work of Rupert Brooke (whose early poems she published), Graham Greene (whose career she helped to launch), Elizabeth Bowen and Rose Macaulay (both of whose first stories she published),
D. H. Lawrence, and
Walter de la Mare. Beginning after World War I and continuing after the
Westminster Gazette folded in 1928, she hosted a literary salon with her then-flatmate Macaulay that was attended by
Edith Sitwell,
Osbert Sitwell,
Aldous Huxley,
W. B. Yeats, and de la Mare. In the mid 1920s, Royde-Smith published the first of her novels, along with plays, biographies, and other works, an occupation that she was able to take up full time after the
Gazette closed. Her books examine mundane lives, especially those of women, and often progress from a slow start to a faster-paced, suspenseful finish. Two of her novels—her first,
The Tortoise-Shell Cat (1925), and
The Island (1930)—deal openly if somewhat bleakly with lesbian themes.
The Tortoise-Shell Cat, which has been held to be her best book, is about a thwarted relationship between a young teacher and a predatory older woman; it has gone in and out of print several times. Royde-Smith converted to Catholicism in 1942, and three of her novels have Catholic themes:
For Us in the Dark (1937),
Miss Bendix (1947), and
The Iniquity of Us All (1949). Several of her books are histories:
The Private Life of Mrs. Siddons (1933) and her biography of
Julie de Lespinasse, which has been praised as a model of its kind.
Outside Information: A Diary of Rumour (1941) started out as a diary of World War II in which Royde-Smith intended to focus on how little ordinary people knew about what was going on and ended as a memoir of
the Blitz. The novel
In the Wood (1928) is partly autobiographical, describing aspects of her Yorkshire childhood. As its title suggests,
Jane Fairfax: A New Novel (1940) is inspired by
Jane Austen's novel
Emma. It is experimental in that it mixes together characters from
Emma, characters devised by Royde-Smith, and the two authors themselves. Royde-Smith published her last novel in 1960, her eyesight by then was rapidly deteriorating. She died in 1964 of renal failure. She is buried in
Hampstead Cemetery. ==Personal life==