[3] She obtained her doctorate from the University of London in 1928 where she studied with Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Thomas Walker Arnold and Louis Massignon.
[2] During World War II, she worked for the Wartime Social Survey, translating and writing texts for broadcasting in the Middle East and teaching Arabic to military personnel.
[4] Smith succeeded in bringing attention to the overlooked role of women mystics in Islam, being referenced by future writers such as Schimmel and Sachiko Murata.
Atif Khalil and Shiraz Sheikh state that Smith saw Sufism as inauthentically Islamic and primarily derived from Christian mysticism.
[7] In the 1970s four of Smith's works — by then hard to come by — were reprinted in Amsterdam, by Philo Press in arrangement with The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London.