This is a lively two-volume biography, first published in 1893, of the influential Victorian businessman and politician W. H. Smith (1825–1891), whose father and uncle established the well-known stationery and bookselling business. The author, Herbert Maxwell (1845-1932), was a Scottish essayist and Conservative Member of Parliament who greatly admired Smith's human qualities and had access to his personal papers. Volume 1 describes how Smith helped his father expand their efficient and successful newspaper wholesaling business to include a chain of railway station news- and bookstalls and a lending library, as well as becoming sole agents for The Times in 1854. Smith went into Parliament in 1868, and worked at the Treasury before becoming First Lord of the Admiralty in 1878.