SMITH, GEORGE

born March 26, 1840, London, Eng. died Aug. 19, 1876, Aleppo, Syria English Assyriologist who advanced knowledge of the earliest (Sumerian) period of Mesopotamian civilization with his discovery of one of the most important literary works in Akkadian, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Moreover, its description of a flood, strikingly similar to the account in Genesis, had a stunning effect on Smith's generation. Apprenticed as a bank note engraver at the age of 14, Smith educated himself in the young science of Assyriology and became adept in deciphering the cuneiform tablets from Nineveh that began arriving at the British Museum, London, about 1861. His publication of several essays on cuneiform characters of uncertain meaning attracted attention, and soon he became an assistant in the museum's department of Oriental antiquities. While preparing inscriptions for publication, he was startled to find part of a description of a flood. His report of this discovery prompted The Daily Telegraph of London to sponsor an expedition to find the missing fragment needed to complete the deluge account. In May 1873, on the fifth day of digging at Nineveh, Smith found the fragment. His Chaldean Account of Genesis (1876) became one of the best-selling books of its time. born March 19, 1824, London died April 6, 1901, Byfleet, near Weybridge, Surrey, Eng. British publisher, best known for issuing the works of many Victorian writers and for publishing the first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography. Smith's father, also named George Smith (17891846), learned bookselling in his native Scotland and, after moving to London, joined with another Scot, Alexander Elder, in founding (1816) what became Smith, Elder & Co., booksellers and stationers; in 1819 they also became publishers. The young Smith was born over the shop, came to know the business intimately, and, upon his father's death in 1846, took sole control (Elder and a later third partner having left the firm). For more than 30 years Smith was the friend and publisher of the novelist and critic John Ruskin, and it was with him that Charlotte Bront found a publisher for Jane Eyre. The firm issued works by Charles Darwin, William Makepeace Thackeray, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilkie Collins, Matthew Arnold, Harriet Martineau, James Payn, Anthony Trollope, and Mrs. Humphry Ward. In January 1860 the first of George Smith's three great undertakings was begun, the illustrated literary journal Cornhill Magazine being issued in that month under the editorship of Thackeray. The second venture was the founding in 1865 of the Pall Mall Gazette, a paper described as written by gentlemen for gentlemen. The third and most important was the publication of the Dictionary of National Biography, the first volume of which was issued in 1885, it was completed in 1901, in 66 volumes, and this monumental work was the crowning effort of a successful career. After 1894 Smith did leave the main control of the business in the hands of his younger son, Alexander Murray Smith (who retired from the partnership in 1899), and his youngest daughter's husband, Reginald John Smith (18571916), who from 1899 was sole active partner and who, in 1908, rearranged the original 66 volumes of the Dictionary of National Biography into 22. (In 1917 the Dictionary was given to the University of Oxfordits supplements to be continued by the Oxford University Press.)