Smith, Elder & Co., alternatively Smith, Elder, and Co. or Smith, Elder and Co. was a British publishing company which was most noted for the works it published in the 19th century. It was purchased by John Murray in the early 1900s, its archive now kept as part of the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland.
History
The firm was founded by George Smith (1789–1846) and Alexander Elder (1790–1876) and successfully continued by George Murray Smith (1824–1901). They are known to have published as early as 1826.
They are notable for producing the first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography (DNB).
The firm achieved its first major success with the publication of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre in 1847, under the pseudonym of "Currer Bell".
Other major authors published by the firm included Robert Browning, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, Richard Jefferies, George MacDonald, Charles Reade, John Ruskin, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Alfred Tennyson and George Gissing.[1]