James Robinson Smith papers

James Robinson Smith was born in Hartford, Connecticut on December 27, 1876. He graduated from Yale College in 1898 and did graduate work at Yale and Harvard, receiving his M.A. from Yale in 1904. After graduating, he traveled, worked at a variety of jobs, and engaged in literary pursuits. A writer and scholar, he translated Don Quixote and The Earliest Lives of Dante, did scholarly work on Homer's Iliad and the Bible, and published lists of famous men and great quotations. He also wrote poetry. In World War I, Smith worked on and wrote pamphlets about food rationing in European nations, particularly Belgium. After the war he worked in Europe with the American Red Cross. He spent most of the remainder of his life in Nice, France, writing and working at the English-American Library. In 1905 Smith married Martha Butler, who died in 1910. Their daughter, Lucinda, was born in 1909. Smith died in Nice on June 12, 1954.