Alexander Smith Author

• Gender: Male
• Citizenship: Scotland
• Born: Dec 31, 1829
• Died: Jan 5, 1867

Alexander Smith (31 December 1830- 5 January 1867, 8 January according to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable) was a Scottish poet, and labelled as one of the Spasmodic School.

He was born in a thatched house in Kilmarnock, in the Scottish Lowlands south-west of Glasgow, the first of several children. His father, John Smith, was a Lowlander who worked as a designer of lace, calico prints, paisley patterns, and muslins. His mother Christina Murray Smith was of Highland extraction and, together with a Highland servant girl, first introduced him to Gaelic songs and Scottish legends.

Being too poor to send him to college, his parents placed him in a linen factory in Glasgow to follow his father's trade of a pattern designer.

His early poems appeared in the Glasgow Citizen, in whose editor, James Hedderwick, he found a friend. A Life Drama and other Poems (1853) was a work of promise, ran through several editions, and gained Smith the appointment of secretary to Edinburgh University in 1854.