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Author: Smith, Richard Penn

Biography:

SMITH, Richard Penn (1799-1854: WBIS)

He was the son of another Philadelphia lawyer and writer, William Moore Smith (q.v.) and his wife Ann Rudolph. Even before he was called to the bar in 1821, he was sending contributions to the periodical press; then he became a journalist and editor himself. From 1822 to 1827 he was the proprietor of a flourishing Philadelphia newspaper, the Aurora (from 1824 the Aurora and Franklin Gazette). After selling it he returned to his law practice. But he had already started writing for the theatre, eventually over twenty plays in various genres, fifteen of them produced on the stage in Philadelphia or London. The most successful was his tragedy Caius Marius (produced 1831), which remained in manuscript until 1968. He also published a novel, The Forsaken (1831), and several prose tales. His Miscellaneous Works appeared in a posthumous collection in 1856. He was married twice, first to his cousin Elinor Matilda Blodget in 1823. After she died in 1834 he married (1836) Isabella Stratton Knisell. From the first marriage only one of five children survived, but from the second, all five did. Smith is sometimes credited with authorship of a fictional account of Davy Crockett at the Alamo, Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (1836), but the attribution is not certain. He spent most of his long retirement living on his father's country property at the Falls of the Schuylkill. He is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia along with both wives and the four children who died in infancy. (ancestry.com 26 Sept. 2020; ANBO 26 Sept. 2020; Appleton)

 

Books written (1):

Philadelphia: printed by C. Alexander, 1830