Biography

British botanist, founder and first president of the Linnean society of London, Sir James Edward Smith wrote extensively on the flora of Britain. Alongside James Sowerby (1757-1822), prolific botanical artist and naturalist, he produced the eight-volume English Botany between 1790 and 1814. Once botany and zoology tutor to the Queen (Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz) and princesses, he came from a family of Dissenters, his grandfather having been a Unitarian vicar. Son of a wealthy wool merchant, James Edward was the eldest of seven children and was born above his father's shop in Norwich.

A shy and delicate child he was schooled at home and had, from an early age, a fascination with flowers which he maintained throughout his life. On the very day of Linnaeus' death Smith decided to take up botany and, although his father wanted him to take over the family business, he was persuaded to allow the young scholar to study medicine. Excluded from Oxford and Cambridge due to his religious background he began his studies at Edinburgh University in 1781. Here he received private Latin tuition but never really enjoyed the study of medicine, and instead dedicated himself to the foundation of a natural history society. Smith and his friends botanised in the region, as he had in Norwich as a boy, and when his lecturer offered a prize for the best native Scottish plant collection, he was a clear winner. It was also while in Edinburgh that he published his first scientific paper, entitled "Phaenomen of Vegetable Odours".

In 1783 Smith moved to London to enrol in the School of Anatomy but, while a talented student, he realised he would always have a dislike of dissections. It was this same year that one of the most important events of his life occurred; the entirety of the Carl Von Linnaeus collection was to be sold. By this time a friend of Sir Joseph Banks, the two were eating together when they heard the announcement and his explorer companion persuaded him to think about buying it. Smith and his father had always been very close and the son was particularly careful with money, so although the herbarium, library and additional collections of insects and minerals was very expensive, after much debate his father came up with the amount required. Maintaining the collection in a house he rented in Chelsea, Smith began to study the manuscripts and published some of Linnaeus' translated works. At this time it became clear that Smith would never practise medicine professionally, and despite advice from his family and friends he decided instead to travel in Europe. Leaving London in 1786 and still funded by his ever-devoted father, he travelled first to Leiden where he sat and passed his examinations and finally become a doctor. Over the next 17 months he visited the major cities of France and Italy, receiving lessons from renowned professors and collecting some plants of his own. In Paris in 1787 he worked a while (for the first time in his life) in the Cabinet du Roi, studying Rousseau's herbarium.

Back in London in 1788 Smith would never again leave the country, but this same year alongside Thomas Martyn, A. Bourke Lambert and Richard Salisbury he founded the Linnean Society of London and became its first president. This society enabled members to view the Linnaean collection in a new house of Smith's in Great Marlborough Street. Lecturing in botany and zoology at Guy's Hospital as well as entertaining guests and lecturing in his own home, Smith became exhausted and started to suffer from a "nervous" illness which would plague him for the rest of his life. He also began his prolific writing career at this time, starting with the plant descriptions for Sowerby's English Botany. He then published a much-talked-about account of his European tour in 1793.

It was at this time that he tutored members of the royal family and three years later he was married to Pleasance Reeve. Almost immediately afterwards, in 1796, he left London to return to Norwich which caused great uproar amongst members of the society and Smith's friends, fearing an absentee president would surely bring about its demise. With three months a year in London, the rest of his time was spent writing in Norwich and he produced such publications as Introduction to Physiological and Systematic Botany (1807), Flora Britannica (1800-1804) and Exotic Botany (1804-1808). Another great project of Smith's was to edit the Flora Graeca of John Sibthorp, perhaps the most elaborate and costly flora ever produced. Until his death Smith struggled through the explorer and botanist's jumbled manuscripts to identify his plants. Eventually he produced seven and a half volumes of the epic 10 volume work. Smith also contributed 3,348 botanical pieces for Rees' Cyclopaedia.

In 1814 Smith was knighted. At the same time he campaigned to become botany professor at Cambridge University, a post he very much wanted and for which the current professor had singled him out. Unfortunately he was rejected, solely because of his religious background. In 1825 he published his last and perhaps most important work The English Flora, and despite struggling with ongoing illness, the fourth volume was published the year he died. William J. Hooker would later add a volume on the cryptogamic plants and M. Berkeley on the fungi, completing the work. After his death, Smith did not leave his collection, including the Linnaean items, to the society he founded. Instead he sold it in the hope that his family would benefit from a daring purchase that once cost them so much. Eventually, though, it was the Linnean Society which bought the entirety at a cost of £3,150. His wife, Pleasance, died at the age of 103, having been a widow for 49 years. Unfortunately in the years which passed she edited all of her husband's letters and manuscripts, deleting anything which put him in an unfavourable light, thus removing important information about his life.

Sources
M. Walker, 1988, Sir James Edward Smith MD, FRS, PLS: First president of the Linnean Society
W.T. Stearn, 1967, "Sibthorp, Smith, the 'Flora Graeca' and the 'Florae Graecae Prodromus'", Taxon, 16: 168-178.