Logan Pearsall Smith

Born in Millville, New Jersey, in 1865, Logan Pearsall Smith later made his life in England and became an American-born British essayist and critic. He studied at Harvard and at Oxford, and built a reputation as a careful, stylish writer with a special gift for aphorisms, epigrams, and short reflective prose.

Alongside his literary essays, he wrote on the English language and was known as a scholar of seventeenth-century religious writers. His best-known books include Trivia, Words and Idioms, Afterthoughts, and the autobiography Unforgotten Years, works that show both his learning and his delight in the textures of everyday thought and speech.

Part of a remarkable intellectual family, Smith was also the brother of Mary Berenson and Alys Pearsall Smith. He died in 1946, but his writing remains fresh because it is so compact, observant, and quotable: serious about language, yet often playful about life.