Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith was an English cleric, writer, and social reformer born on June 3, 1771, in Woodford, Essex. He was one of three sons in a merchant family and exhibited a strong academic inclination, attending Winchester College and later New College, Oxford, where he became a fellow. Smith was ordained in 1794 and initially served a curacy in Netheravon. His career included significant contributions to the "Edinburgh Review," which he co-founded in 1802, where he was known for his humorous and witty articles addressing serious social issues.
Throughout his life, Smith faced both personal challenges, including the loss of his children, and professional disappointments, such as never attaining the bishopric he desired. However, he did enjoy some financial success later in life due to an inheritance. Smith's writing style was characterized by a light tone, often filled with sarcasm, which made him a pioneer of humorous literature, influencing later comedic figures in British culture. He died on February 22, 1845, leaving behind a legacy as a significant figure in the realms of journalism and social commentary.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Sydney Smith
Writer
- Born: June 3, 1771
- Birthplace: Woodford, Essex, England
- Died: February 22, 1845
Biography
Sydney Smith was born on June 3, 1771, in Woodford, Essex, England, one of three sons of Robert Smith, a merchant, and Maria, née Olier, the daughter of a French immigrant. His older brother Robert Percy, nicknamed Bobus, became a lawyer and classical scholar; Courtenay, the youngest, made a fortune in India and became a noted Orientalist. Sydney went to school in Southampton and then to Winchester College, where he was captain of the school. After six months in Normandy, he enrolled at New College, Oxford, where he stayed on after graduation in 1792 as a fellow. He was ordained in 1794 and obtained a curacy at Netheravon, near Amesbury.
Smith accepted an appointment to serve as tutor to the son of the local squire on an educational tour of Germany, but was sidetracked to Edinburgh when war broke out. He stayed there for five years, although he returned to England to marry Catherine Amelia Pybus on July 2, 1800—much to the annoyance of her brother, a lord of the admiralty who did not want her married to a Whig. They had five children, one of whom died in infancy; the eldest son died in 1828 at the age of twenty-four, causing Smith much grief, but the elder of their daughters, Saba, married Queen Victoria’s physician, Henry Holland.
In 1802, with Francis Jeffrey, Francis Horner and Henry Brougham, Smith founded the reformist Edinburgh Review. He wrote many humorous articles for the magazine, although he moved to London in 1804, where he officiated as a preacher at the Foundling Hospital and lectured at the Royal Institution on moral philosophy. In 1807, he obtained the living at Foston-le-Clay in Yorkshire. His most popular work, the Swiftian Letters on the Subject of Catholics, to my Brother Abraham, who lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley was issued soon after his arrival in Foston.
In 1825, Smith was presented with the living of Londesborough on a temporary basis, and was then enabled by Lord Lyndhurst to exchange Foston for Combe Florey in Somerset in 1829. In 1831, when the Whigs came back into government, he was appointed a canon at St Paul’s, but he never got the bishopric he craved. In 1839, a bequest of fifty thousand pounds, resulting from Courtenay’s death in India, made him a rich man, but it came too late in life to salve his bitter disappointment; his articles were collected in the same year. After suffering a heart attack in October, 1844, he died on February 22, 1845.
All of Smith’s publications were spinoffs from his journalism, and maintained a conspicuously light tone when discussing serious issues. Even his letters taking the Ecclesiastical Commission to task are steeped in sarcastic wit. G. K. Chesterton rightly named him as the father of the nonsense genre, meaning it as a great compliment, but Smith might not have been amused. His well-intentioned but rather foolhardy character Mrs. Partington became the archetype of many subsequent comic figures featured in Punch and in popular theater.