Lewis Worthington Smith

Born in Malta, Illinois, in 1866, Lewis Worthington Smith became an American professor and writer whose career was closely tied to the teaching of English. He studied at Beloit College and later at Cotner University, where he earned degrees before going on to teach in schools and colleges in Nebraska and Iowa.

Smith is best known for leading Drake University’s English Department for 34 years. Alongside his academic work, he published poetry, a comedy-drama play, and books on writing and rhetoric, including The Writing of the Short Story, Modern Composition and Rhetoric, and The Mechanism of English Style. His writing was well received in its time and often reprinted.

He retired from Drake in 1940 and died in Des Moines, Iowa, in December 1947. Today, he is remembered as a teacher-writer whose career bridged literary ambition and classroom practice.