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GEORGE SMITH (1789-1846)

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Originally appearing in Volume V25, Page 261 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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GEORGE SMITH (1789-1846)  ,
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British publisher, founder of the
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firm of Smith, Elder & Co., was born in Scotland in 1789 . From
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Elgin, where he was apprenticed to a bookseller, he migrated to
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London, where he found employment first with Rivingtons, and afterwards with John Murray . In 18x6 Smith and another Scot, Alexander Elder, began business at 158 Fenchurch Street as booksellers and stationers; and in 1819 they became publishers also . It was here that GEORGE SMITH (2) (1824—1901), the most famous member of the firm, was born on the 19th of, March 1824; and in the same
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year the business was removed to 65 Cornhill . At the age of fourteen George Smith (2) came into the business, and in 1843 he took over the control of the
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publishing department . On his
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father's
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death in 1846 the responsibility of the business devolved principally upon him, and under his management it increased thirteen times in twenty years . A large portion of the business was connected with
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foreign agencies and banking, especially with India, but this was relinquished in 1868 to his partner Henry S . King, who now separated from the firm, retaining the old premises at Cornhill, while Smith removed the publishing business, now under his
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sole control, to 15
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Waterloo Place . For over
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thirty years Smith was the friend and publisher of Ruskin, and it was with him that Jane Eyre found a publisher . In 18K5 was started the Overland
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Mail, a weekly periodical for
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Indian readers, and the Homeward Mail, containing Indian
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news for
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English readers . By Smith, Elder & Co. were issued
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works by Darwin, Ruskin, Thackeray, Robert and Mrs Browning, Wilkie Collins, Matthew Arnold,
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Miss Martineau, James Payn and Mrs Humphry Ward . In 1866 was published Trollope's Last Chronicles of Barset, for which £3000 was paid .

In

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January 186o the first of George Smith's three
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great undertakings . was begun, the Cornhill
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Magazine being issued in that month under the editorship of Thackeray . The second venture was the founding in 1865 of the
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Pall Mall
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Gazette (see
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NEWSPAPERS) . The third and most important was the publication of the
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Dictionary of
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National Biography, the first
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volume of which was issued in 1882; it was completed in 1901, in 66 volumes; and this monumental
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work was the crowning effort of a successful career . Smith was a rich man, not only from his publishing business, but on account of his large ownership in. the
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mineral
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water Apollinaris and other ventures . His second son, Alexander Murray Smith, joined the firm in 189o, and with him was associated in 1894 his
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brother-in-law Reginald J . Smith, who in 1899 became acting partner . George Smith himself died at Byfleet, near
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Weybridge, on the 6th of
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April 19oI . See the memoir (1901) of George Smith (2) prefixed to vol . .i. of the supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography; reminiscences contributed to the Cornhill Magazine (Nov . 1900-Feb . 1901) by George Smith; an article by
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Sir Leslie Stephen in the same magazine (May 19o1); and the
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special number of the Cornhill in January 191o, published on its 50th anniversary .

End of Article: GEORGE SMITH (1789-1846)
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