Author: Smith, Horatio
Biography:
SMITH, Horatio (1779-1849: ODNB)
Familiarly known as "Horace," he was the fifth of eight children born in London to Protestant dissenters, Mary (Bogle) Smith and Robert Smith, a lawyer; like his brothers he was well educated but did not attend university. He went from being a clerk in a counting house to partner in an insurance business, then became a stock broker. On the Stock Exchange he grew so rich that he was able to leave business in 1820 and attend to his literary pursuits. He brought out the first of many novels in 1800, contributed regularly to periodicals (with occasional collections separately published), and had his first play performed in 1812. Social satire and light comedy were his forte. The identity and fate of his first partner are not known but they had two children, the first born in 1811; in 1817 he married Sophia Ford, who raised those two children along with two more daughters of their own and was always identified as his second wife. The collection of parodies of prominent contemporary poets entitled Rejected Addresses, which he wrote in collaboration with his brother James (q.v.) and published anonymously in 1812, had reached its eighteenth UK edition by 1833 when Smith wrote a new Preface for it, telling amusing stories of its reception and of their generally warm relations with the famous poets whom they had parodied. In 1821 Smith and his family set out for Italy to join Shelley (q.v.) in Pisa, but they were delayed in France and at last stayed in Versailles for four years; Smith's only son died there in 1823. From 1826 to 1849 they lived in Brighton, where Smith carried on writing: 13 more novels, collections of shorter fiction, and essays, besides his edition of James Smith's Memoirs, Letters, and Comic Miscellanies (1840). The fiction was at first published anonymously or as "by the author of" (for example) Brambletye House (1826). In 1849, seeking treatment for his gout and other ailments, they moved to Tunbridge Wells, where Smith died and is buried. (ODNB 24 Sept. 2020; findmypast.com 24 Sept. 2020; Rejected Addresses [1833])
Other Names:
- Horace
- Horace Smith