Albert Smith

Albert Richard Smith (24 May 1816 – 23 May 1860) was an English physician, author, entertainer, and mountaineer.

Literary career

Smith was born at Chertsey, Surrey. The son of a surgeon, he studied medicine in London and in Paris, and his first literary effort was an account of his life in Paris, which appeared in the Mirror. He gradually abandoned his medical work in favour of writing. Though a journalist rather than a literary figure, he was one of the most popular writers of his time, and a favourite humorist. He was one of the early contributors to Punch 1842, and was also a regular contributor to Richard Bentley's Miscellany, in whose pages his first and best book, the novel The Adventures of Mr Ledbury, appeared in 1842. His other novels were The Fortunes of the Scattergood Family (1845), The Marchioness of Brinvilliers: The Poisoner of the Seventeenth Century (1846), The Struggles and Adventures of Christopher Tadpole (1848), and The Pottleton Legacy: A Story of Town and Country (1849). He also published a novella, The Adventures of Jack Holiday, with Something about His Sister (1844).

In 1842 Smith's first play, Blanche Heriot, or The Chertsey Curfew, was produced at the Surrey Theatre. In 1843 he published The Wassail-Bowl: A Comic Christmas Sketchbook, which included a short story on the same subject as his play of the year before, "Blanche Heriot: A Legend of Old Chertsey Church". He also wrote a series of so-called natural histories: The Gent (1847), The Ballet Girl (1847), 'Stuck-Up' People (1847), The Idler upon Town (1848) and The Flirt (1848). Smith wrote several extravaganzas for the Lyceum Theatre, including Aladdin (1844), Valentine and Orson (1844) and Whittington and His Cat (1845), and adapted for the same theatre Charles Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) and The Battle of Life (1846). With Angus Bethune Reach he founded and edited a monthly magazine called The Man in the Moon, which ran from January 1847 to June 1849.