Dorothy Gladys “Dodie” Smith (3 May 1896 – 24 November 1990) was an English novelist and playwright. Smith is best known for her novel “The Hundred and One Dalmatians”.
Dorothy was born on 3 May 1896 in Whitefield, near Bury in Lancashire. Her parents were Ernest and Ella Smith (née Furber). Ernest was a bank manager; he died in 1898, when Dodie was two years old. After the death of her father she lived with her mother, maternal grandparents, two aunts and three uncles. Her uncle Harold Furber, an amateur actor, read plays with her and introduced her to contemporary drama.
She wrote her first play at the age of ten, and she began acting in bit roles in her teens at the Manchester Athenaeum Dramatic Society. In 1914, Dodie entered the Academy of Dramatic Art. Her first role came in Arthur Wing Pinero's Playgoers.
She wrote her first play, Autumn Crocus, in 1931 under the pseudonym C.L. Anthony. Her fourth play, Call it a Day, was put on by the Theatre Guild on 28 January 1936 and ran for 194 performances. Her first novel is “I Capture the Castle” (1948).