Smith Sir William

Smith, SIR WILLIAM, LL.D D.C.L., was born in 1813, and took high classical honours at the University of London. Whilst reading for the Bar he engaged in literary work for the publishing house of John Murray, and in 1840 began the compilation of the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, which was followed by the series of encyclopadic books of reference with which his name will long be associated. He found time, moreover, to act as classical examiner and member of the Senate of the London University, to prepare an edition of Gibbon, and to supervise the great Atlas of Biblical and Classical Geography, which appeared in 1875. He became editor of the Quarterly Review in 1867, and maintained the high literary and intellectual traditions of that periodical until his death in the autumn of 1893.