Lewis Goldsmith

Born around 1763, probably near Richmond in Surrey, Lewis Goldsmith was a British-born political writer and journalist of Portuguese-Jewish background. He was trained for the law but soon moved into pamphlets, satire, and political journalism instead, where his appetite for argument found a better stage.

Goldsmith became known for his intense engagement with the politics of the French Revolution and Napoleonic era. Early in his career he wrote in support of revolutionary France, but his loyalties shifted over time, and he later became a fierce critic of Napoleon. He worked in both England and France, founded or contributed to newspapers, and published political works including The Crimes of Cabinets and Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud.

In later life he returned to Paris, where he died on January 6, 1846, after a long illness. Today he is remembered less as a novelist than as a vivid, combative publicist whose writing captured the turbulence of his age.