Life and Times of the Right Honourable William Henry Smith, M.P

A lively, wide-ranging 1893 biography of an influential Victorian newspaper wholesaler, bookseller and politician whose retail business survives today.

Herbert Eustace Maxwell (Author)

9781108009232, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 March 2010

392 pages, 5 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.2 cm, 0.5 kg

This is a lively two-volume biography, first published in 1893, of the influential Victorian businessman and politician W. H. Smith (1825–1891), whose father and uncle established the well-known stationery and bookselling business. The author, Herbert Maxwell (1845-1932), was a Scottish essayist and Conservative Member of Parliament who greatly admired Smith's human qualities and had access to his personal papers. Volume 1 documents the foundation of the newspaper wholesaling business, Smith's education and his thwarted desire to become a priest. It describes how Smith helped his father expand their efficient and successful business to include a chain of railway station news- and bookstalls and a lending library, as well as becoming sole agents for The Times in 1854. Smith went into Parliament in 1868, and worked for several years at the Treasury. Volume 1 ends with his tour to Cyprus in 1878 as First Lord of the Admiralty.

1. 1784–1846
2. 1846–1854
3. 1854–1893
4. 1855–1865
5. 1865–1868
6. 1868–1869
7. 1870–1871
8. 1872
9. 1873–1874
10. 1874–1876
11. 1876–1878
12. 1878.

Subject Areas: Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP]