Logan Pearsall Smith

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Lady Henry Somerset with Hannah Whitall Smith, Mary Brenson, Logan Pearsall Smith, Karin Stephen and Ray Strachey

Logan Pearsall Smith (* 18th October 1865 in Millville , New Jersey ; † 3. March 1946 in London ) was a British, from the United States originating writer , aphorisms and literary critic .

family

Logan Pearsall Smith came from a wealthy Quaker family from New Jersey. His mother, Hannah Whitall Smith, was the daughter of a wealthy glass manufacturer. His father Robert Pearsall Smith was a descendant of the politician James Logan (1674-1754), a longtime advisor to William Penn and Chief Justice of Pennsylvania in the 18th century. Both parents were revival preachers and were active as writers. His sister Alys Pearsall Smith was the first wife of Bertrand Russell , his sister Mary Smith was married to the art historian Bernard Berenson . Smith himself remained unmarried.

Life

Smith, who lived in England with his family for a while as a child, attended the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia . Smith refused to join the family business and instead studied, with generous financial support from the family, at Haverford College at Harvard, and at Balliol College, Oxford University, where he graduated in 1891 with a degree in philology. After completing his studies, he stayed in England - alternately in his London apartment or in the country - in Paris and in various European countries, was active as a writer and lived a life as a flaneur . In 1913 he took British citizenship. I.a. During these years he worked with the English diplomat and poet Henry Wotton , on whom he wrote a two-volume work

Smith was affiliated with the Bloomsbury Group and several of his works were published by the Hogarth Press .

plant

The book Trivia is considered to be his main work . The collection of prose sketches was created between 1902 and 1933 and was repeatedly revised by Smith. The sophisticated, often ironic prose pieces are in the tradition of Baudelaire's “Spleen de Paris” and contain reflections on one's own life as well as descriptions and reflections on inconspicuous everyday occurrences.

Reception in literature

Logan Pearsall Smith served Virginia Woolf as a model for the character of Nicholas Green in her novel Orlando , whose views and opinions are partly literal or analogous quotations from Smith's pamphlet "The Prospects of Literature" published in the Hogarth Press.

Quotes

“You have to strive for two things in life: to get what you want and enjoy it. Only the wisest can do the second. "

- LP Smith. : Afterthougths. 1931.

"Those who set out to serve God and Mammon will soon discover that there is no God"

- LP Smith : Afterthoughts. 1931.

Collections of quotations

Works (selection)

Of his numerous short stories and literary works, only Trivia has so far been translated into German.

  • Trivia . 1902; More trivia . New York 1921; All trivia . Trivia, more trivia, afterthoughts, last words. Collection. 1933. German translation:
Trivia . From d. Engl. And with an afterword by Friedhelm Kemp . Zurich: Manesse 2003. ISBN 978-3-7175-2014-6
  • Anglo-American copyright ... . Harvard University, 1887. ISBN 978-1-272-54588-8
  • The Youth of Parnassus, and other stories . 1895.
  • Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton . 2 vol. [1907]. Reprinted Oxford: Clarendon Press 1966. ISBN 1-176-53186-7
The first volume contains a biography of Wotton, the second a collection of 511 personal and diplomatic letters from Wotton from 1589 to 1639.
  • Little Essays Drawn from the Writings of George Santayana. [1920].
  • English idioms . 1923.
  • Four words. Romantic, Originality, Creative, Genius . Oxford, Clartendon Press 1924.
  • Unforgotten Years . 1939.
Autobiography.
  • Milton and His Modern Critics . Oxford Univ. Press 1942.

literature

  • Michael H. Whitworth: Logan Pearsall Smith and Orlando. In: Review of English Studies. Vol. 55. 2004. p. 598.

Notes and individual references

  1. ^ Whitworth 2004.
  2. ↑ There art two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
  3. ↑ Those whgo set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Smith, Logan Pearsall
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American writer, aphorist and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Millville , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1946
Place of death London