Alexander Smith was an aspiring poet who, his highly acclaimed early work soon discredited and ridiculed as "spasmodic," turned to prose in the hope of finding a new literary career. In doing so, he incorporated into his new work many of the characteristic features of his verse, and the largely favorable responses of contemporary readers testified to the growing popularity of this prose before his early death. Generally forgotten or remembered only as a "spasmodic" curiosity today, Smith managed to leave a small but significant body of prose which both explains his theoretical conceptions and demonstrates his critical understanding of the familiar essay as a literary form.

Born in his parents' thatched house in Kilmarnock, southwest of Glasgow, Alexander Smith was the first of several children. But because no law required that births in Scotland be recorded until 1854, and perhaps because the Smiths were dissenters whose parenthood would...