author
Gertrude Hill Lewes
Best known for writing Dr. Southwood Smith: A Retrospect in 1898, this Victorian author brought family memory and social history together in a warm, personal biography. Her work opens a window onto the reforming world around public health, medicine, and nineteenth-century England.
1 Audiobook
Dr. Southwood Smith: A Retrospect
by Gertrude Hill Lewes
About the author
Gertrude Hill Lewes was an English writer born in 1837 and died in 1918. Reliable catalog and archive records connect her with one clearly documented book, Dr. Southwood Smith: A Retrospect, first published in 1898.
She wrote that book about Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith, her grandfather, a physician and social reformer. The George Eliot Archive identifies her as the wife of Charles Lee Lewes, the eldest son of George Henry Lewes, and also notes that she was the granddaughter of Dr. Southwood Smith.
That background helps explain the character of her writing: part family remembrance, part biographical portrait, and part record of a reform-minded Victorian circle. For listeners interested in nineteenth-century lives, her work offers a direct and personal view of the people behind debates on health, sanitation, and social change.