George Murray Smith was the son of George Smith

George Smith (publisher)

George Smith was a Scottish born publisher who co-founded, along with Alexander Elder, the important British publishing company Smith, Elder & Co.-Early life:...

 (1789-1846) who with Alexander Elder (1789–1846) started the Victorian publishing firm of Smith, Elder & Co.

Smith, Elder & Co.

Smith, Elder & Co. was a firm of British publishers who were most noted for the works they published in the 19th century.The firm was founded by George Smith and Alexander Elder and successfully continued by George Murray Smith .They are notable for producing the first edition of the Dictionary...

. His brainchild, The Cornhill Magazine, was the premier fiction-carrying magazine of the 19th century.

The firm was extremely successful. G. M. Smith succeeded his father and expanded the product and sales areas to cover most Victorian topics and the British Empire

British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...

. The firm also supplied a catalogue full of other products desirable to British expatriates.

George Smith is widely acknowledged to have inspired the character of Graham Bretton in Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...

's novel Villette

Villette

-Places:Villette or La Villette is the name or part of the name of several places in Europe:-France:*Villette, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle département*Villette, in the Yvelines département*Villette-d'Anthon, in the Isère département...

(as he himself believed).

From 1890 until his death, Smith lived at Somerset House

Somerset House, Park Lane

Somerset House, Park Lane , was an 18th century town house on the east side of Park Lane, where it meets Oxford Street, in the Mayfair area of London, England...

, in Park Lane

Park Lane (road)

Park Lane is a major road in the City of Westminster, in Central London.-History:Originally a country lane running north-south along what is now the eastern boundary of Hyde Park, it became a fashionable residential address from the eighteenth century onwards, offering both views across Hyde Park...

, having bought the lease from Lady Hermione Graham, a daughter of the twelfth Duke of Somerset

Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset

Sir Edward Adolphus Seymour , 12th Duke of Somerset, etc. KG, PC , styled Baron Seymour until 1855, was a British Whig aristocrat and politician, who served in various cabinet positions in the mid-19th century...

. The house became known as 40, Park Lane. He died at St. George's Hill, Byfleet, Surrey on 6 April 1901.

Sources

Sources used in this article

• ODNB Bill Bell, ‘Smith, George Murray (1824–1901)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 which cites as printed book sources:
• L. Huxley The house of Smith Elder (1923)
• J. W. Robertson Scott The story of the Pall Mall Gazette
  Pall Mall Gazette
  The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood...
  
  Oxford University Press (1950)
• J. Glynn Prince of publishers: a biography of George Smith, Alison & Busby (1986) ISBN 0-85031-697-9

Inline citations

External links

• Memoir of George Smith by Sidney Lee