author
active 19th century E. W. (Edward Walter) Smithson
Best known for writing on the Shakespeare authorship debate, this elusive late-19th- and early-20th-century author argued passionately for the Baconian view. His surviving work has a brisk, combative energy that captures a long-running literary controversy in full swing.
1 Audiobook
Baconian Essays
by active 19th century E. W. (Edward Walter) Smithson
About the author
Very little biographical information about this author is easy to confirm today, and many library and ebook catalogs simply list him as E. W. (Edward Walter) Smithson, active 19th century. What can be confirmed is that he wrote on the Shakespeare authorship question, taking the Baconian position that Francis Bacon—not the man from Stratford—was the true author of the plays and poems traditionally credited to Shakespeare.
Smithson's known works include Shakespeare-Bacon: An Essay, published in 1899, and Baconian Essays, published in 1922. The later volume was issued with an introduction and additional essays by Sir George Greenwood, who referred to Smithson as a friend and described him as already deceased by that time.
For modern listeners, Smithson is less a fully documented literary figure than a vivid voice from a very specific intellectual quarrel. His writing belongs to the world of earnest literary detectives, where questions of authorship, evidence, and reputation were argued with real intensity.