Smith, Ernest William

Ernest William Smith, journalist and special correspondent, was born in 1864 on the Isle of Wight, Hampshire, Great Britain. Except for a few anecdotes from his autobiography, Fields of Adventure (1923), very little is known of his early life or family history. As a youth he became a junior reporter on the Isle of Wight Chronicle and the Portsmouth Times where he, among other duties, reported on the lives and activities of the British Royal Family. In 1886 Smith went to Paris as a foreign correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette as well as several other London papers.

Smith joined the Daily News in the 1890s and became assistant to Mrs. Emily Crawford, the paper's Paris correspondent, from 1897 to 1899. During this time, Smith also became associated with the origins of the literary magazine, Revues des Revues (1890-1919), which was superseded in 1919 by La Revue modiale (1919-1936). Through his journalistic and editorial efforts, Smith corresponded with and met some of the most prominent European literary and dramatic figures of the day, including Sarah Bernhardt, Anatole France, Lord Kitchner, Lord Roberts, Cecil and Frank Rhodes, Victorien Sardou, G. W. Steevens, Oscar Wilde, Emile Zola, and others.

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