Sir George Adam Smith

Sir George Adam Smith 1856-1942, Scottish biblical scholar and Hebraist, b. Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. He was professor of Old Testament language, literature, and theology in the United Free Church College of Glasgow from 1892 to 1909 and thereafter, until 1935, principal and vice chancellor of the Univ. of Aberdeen. He frequently traveled and lectured in the United States. Smith was knighted in 1916. He is especially noted for his Historical Geography of the Holy Land (2d ed. 1894, repr. 1966 of 1932 ed.).

Smith, George (1824–1901), in 1846 became sole head of the firm of Smith & Elder, publishers and East India agents. Under his control the business quickly grew in both the India agency and publishing directions. The chief authors whose works he published in his early career were Ruskin, C. Brontë, whose Jane Eyre he issued in 1848, and Thackeray, whose The History of Henry Esmond he brought out in 1852.

In 1853 he took a partner, H. S. King, and after weathering the storm of the Indian Mutiny, founded in 1859 the Cornhill Magazine, with Thackeray as editor, and in 1865 (with Frederick Greenwood) he founded the Pall Mall Gazette. In 1868 he dissolved partnership with King and carried on the publishing branch of the business alone at 15 Waterloo Place, London. His chief authors now included R. Browning, M. Arnold, (Sir) L. Stephen, and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. He was founder (1882) and proprietor of the Dictionary of National Biography.