It’s the birthday of British novelist and playwright Dodie Smith (1896-1990), best known today for her novel The One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1956), which was adapted for film twice (1961, 1996). But Smith’s greatest work is arguably the coming-of-age novel I Capture the Castle (1948), voted one of Britain’s 100 best-loved novels in 2003.

Smith was born in Whitefield, Lancashire, England. Her father died when she was two, and she and her mother moved in with her mother’s parents in Old Trafford and lived there together with several aunts and uncles. Smith’s grandfather and one uncle instilled in her a love of the theatre, and she began writing plays at 10 and acting in her teen years. At 14, Smith moved with her mother and new stepfather to London, and at 18 she entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In addition to landing various acting roles, Smith sold a movie script and wrote a one-act play; her first full-length, staged play was Autumn Crocus (1931), and her biggest success was the comedy Call It a Day (1936). Smith wrote successful plays through the 30s and 40s, including Dear Octopus (1938) and Lovers and Friends (1943).

Back when Smith was still getting started as a playwright, she’d worked at Heal and Son’s furniture store in London and had a fling with Ambrose Heal himself (because what woman can resist a man named Ambrose?). At the store she also met Alec Macbeth Beesley, and he became Smith’s good friend and business manager and, in 1939, her husband. Beesley was a conscientious objector—rather awkward in Britain at the time—so the two moved to the U.S. in 1940, and it was there that Smith wrote I Capture the Castle. It was her first novel and a huge hit and continues to be popular today.

I Capture the Castle tells the story of teenager Cassandra Mortmain, who lives with her family in a collapsing castle that they rent for practically nothing because her father, a struggling novelist, keeps the family trapped in poverty. Cassandra opens the novel, which is her journal, with the famous line, “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.” The American heirs to the castle show up, Cassandra falls in love, and intrigue follows. The novel has been called the equal of The Catcher in the Rye, which was published just three years later.

Smith was always homesick for England, and the couple returned there in the 50s. Smith had nine Dalmatians, one of which was named Pongo, and one day a friend said, “Those dogs would make a lovely fur coat.” The idea for her novel was born; Smith also wrote a fantastical sequel, The Starlight Barking (1967).

Smith died at 94 in Uttlesford, north Essex, England, and was cremated.

Have as pleasant a Friday as possible given the desperately dreary weather, for heaven’s sake take some more Sudafed as needed, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.