William T. (William Thomas) Smedley

William T. Smedley (William Thomas Smedley, 1851–1934) was a British writer, collector, and businessman. Reliable library and reference sources identify him as the author of The Mystery of Francis Bacon (published in 1912), and Folger sources describe him as a notable bibliophile, collector of Elizabethan material, and committed Baconian with homes in London and Bath.

Smedley’s interests seem to have centered on the Shakespeare authorship question and the wider world of Elizabethan literature. In 1924 he sold a large part of his library to Henry Clay Folger, and the Folger Shakespeare Library still records well over a thousand volumes from his collection.

He also appears in early cinema history as a chartered accountant from Birmingham who became chairman of British Mutoscope and Biograph. That mix of finance, book collecting, and literary obsession gives him an unusual profile: not a famous literary stylist, but a serious cultural enthusiast whose books and ideas left a trace in both Shakespeare scholarship circles and the history of film.