Smith, Sidney I Sidney Smith I, misc. writer. The Athenaeum, Dec. 22, 1849, reviewing one of Smith's books, more than hinted that "Sidney Smith" was a pseudonym, assumed by the author "on the strength of some supposed affinity" between the thought and language of his book and that of "the writings of Peter Plymley." If the author's name was really Sidney Smith, he had, to be sure, a right to use it, admitted the reviewer grudgingly, and "we have of course no more to say." Sidney Smith was Smith's real name. Author of The Principles of Phrenology, 1838, assigned in some catalogues to Sidney Smith "Phrenologist," but proved by announcement on verso of title page of Whether to Go, and Whither? to be by the writer here discussed. As secretary to National Anti-Corn-Law League, delivered in 1840 three lectures in Devizes, reported in Wiltshire Independent and reprinted as pamphlet, Anti-Corn-Law Lectures. Author of two guide books for emigrants, The Settler's New Home: or The Emigrant's Location and Whether to Go, and Whither?, both published 1849, and brought out in following year under a joint title. In 1849 published also The Mother Country: or, The Spade, the Wastes, and the Eldest Son, an analysis of the agricultural, economic, and social condition of England; dedicated the book to Baron Lionel Rothschild, "In return for much considerate kindness and many useful acts of effective service," and in tribute to Rothschild's character and his management of wealth to the benefit of mankind. The dedication suggests that Falkland. An Historical Play, 1876, dedicated to Alfred de Rothschild "by his obliged servant, Sidney Smith," is probably by the same Sidney Smith. Smith had much interest in seventeenth-century English history.
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