SMITH, GEORGE (1789-1846), British publisher, founder of the firm of Smith, Elder & Co., was born in Scotland in 1789. From Elgin, where he was apprenticed to a bookseller, he migrated to London, where he found employment first with Rivingtons, and afterwards with John Murray. In 1816 Smith and another Scot, Alexander Elder, began business at 158 Fenchurch Street as booksellers and stationers; and in 1819 they became pub lishers also. Here GEORGE SMITH (2) (1824-1901), the most famous member of the firm, was born on March 19, 1824; and in the same year the business was removed to 65 Cornhill. Smith re moved the publishing business, when it came under his sole con trol, to 15 Waterloo Place. For over thirty years Smith was the friend and publisher of Ruskin, and it was with him that Jane Eyre found a publisher. The firm issued works by Darwin, Ruskin, Thackeray, Robert and Mrs. Browning, Wilkie Collins, Matthew Arnold, Miss Martineau, James Payn, Trollope and Mrs. Humphry Ward. In January 186o the first of George Smith's three great undertakings was begun, the Cornhill Magazine being issued in that month under the editorship of Thackeray. The sec
ond venture was the founding in 1865 of the Pall Mall Gazette. (See NEWSPAPERS.) The third and most important was the publi cation of the Dictionary of National Biography, the first volume of which was issued in 1882 ; it was completed in 1901, in 66 vol umes; and this monumental work, since carried on by successive supplements, was the crowning effort of a successful career. George Smith died at Byfleet, near Weybridge, on April 6, 1901.
See the memoir (Igo') of George Smith (2) prefixed to vol. i. of the supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography; reminis cences contributed to the Cornhill Magazine (Nov. 'goo-Feb. 'go') by George Smith ; an article by Sir Leslie Stephen in the same magazine (May 1901) ; and the special number of the Cornhill in January 191o, published on its soth anniversary.