Alexander Smith (31 December 1829 – 5 January 1867) was a Scottish poet and essayist, born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and raised in Paisley, where he worked for a time as a pattern designer in the textile trade before turning to literature full-time. Smith rose to fame with A Life-Drama, and Other Poems (1853), a work praised for its lush imagery and youthful ambition. He became associated with the so-called Spasmodic school of poetry, a group criticized by contemporaries — notably in W. E. Aytoun's parody Firmilian — for overwrought emotion and loose structure. Despite the mockery, his early success secured him the post of Secretary to Edinburgh University in 1854, a position he held for the rest of his life. He went on to publish City Poems (1857) and Edwin of Deira (1861), moving toward more restrained, narrative verse. He also turned to prose, producing the well-regarded essays collected in Dreamthorp (1863) — considered his finest and most enduring work, admired for its reflective, personal style — as well as A Summer in Skye (1865), a lyrical travel memoir of the Scottish Highlands, and a novel, Alfred Hagart's Household (1866). Smith died young, at thirty-six, of diphtheria complicated by overwork. His reputation as a poet dimmed after the Spasmodic controversy, but Dreamthorp has kept his name alive as a distinctive voice in Victorian essay-writing.
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