David Nichol Smith

author

David Nichol Smith

1875–1962

A leading scholar of 17th- and 18th-century English literature, he spent much of his career shaping how readers and students approached writers from the Restoration and Augustan age. His teaching and editions helped make Oxford an important center for English studies in the first half of the 20th century.

1 Audiobook

Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare

Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare

by David Nichol Smith

About the author

Born in Edinburgh in 1875, David Nichol Smith was educated at George Watson’s College, the University of Edinburgh, and the Sorbonne. After working on school textbooks, he was appointed Professor of English at Armstrong College in Newcastle in 1904, beginning a distinguished academic career devoted to English literature.

Smith later moved to Oxford, where he became a fellow of Merton College and served as Merton Professor of English Literature. He was especially respected for his knowledge of literature from the Restoration to the end of the 18th century, and he became known as an influential editor, teacher, and scholar in that field.

He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, a mark of the esteem in which his work was held. Smith died in 1962, leaving behind a reputation for careful scholarship and for helping generations of readers better understand the writers of an earlier age.