Janet Seymour Smith

Janet Seymour-Smith born Janet de Granville (25 August 1930 – 2 September 1998) was an English translator and scholar. She worked as a translator of Greek texts for Robert Graves and she became a life-long muse and collaborator with her prolific writer husband Martin Seymour-Smith.

Life Seymour-Smith was born in 1930 in Littleham near Exmouth. Her parents were Hilda St Hilary Edith Everard (born Mayne) and her husband Lionel Richard Gethin de Glanville. Her father was a physician and she went to school in the south-west and later in North Wales.

She went to Oxford to study the classics at Somerville College. When Robert Graves published The Greek Myths in two volumes in 1955 he had based his work on the translations by Janet Seymour-Smith. She began working for Graves in Mallorca where she was employed as a translator while her boyfriend, Martin Seymour-Smith was a tutor to one of Graves' children. Janet also taught Latin to Robert Graves's son, William.

She did not push herself forward. Robert Nye described her as delicate and incandescent. She had periods where her husband had to mentally support her.