Langdon Smith

Born in Kentucky on January 4, 1858, Langdon Smith became an American journalist and writer whose fame now rests largely on a single much-loved poem, Evolution. He was educated in Louisville, and early accounts say that as a young man he served as a trooper in campaigns against the Comanche and Apache; letters he wrote about those experiences reportedly helped him enter newspaper work.

Smith later worked in journalism in several cities, including Chicago and New York. Although he wrote more than one poem, Evolution became the piece most closely tied to his name, opening with the memorable line about a tadpole and a fish and following two lovers through vast ages of natural history.

He died in Brooklyn, New York, on April 8, 1908, at just 50 years old. A frontispiece portrait appears in the posthumous 1909 book edition of Evolution, and his reputation has endured as a rare case of a writer remembered above all for one striking, instantly recognizable poem.