Janet Adam Smith

Janet Buchanan Adam Smith OBE (9 December 1905 – 11 September 1999) was a Scottish writer, editor, literary journalist, and champion of Scottish literature. She was active from the 1930s through to the end of the century. Leonard Miall wrote: "Biographer, mountaineer, critic, literary editor, textual scholar, comic versifier, visiting professor, hostess, anthologist, traveller – there seemed to be nothing at which Janet Adam Smith did not shine. And she shone with an intensity that made others glow in response". Family background and education She was born into the old Scots intellectual elite. Her father, Sir George Adam Smith FBA (1856–1942), was a Biblical scholar, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis, at the Free Church College in Glasgow, and then, from 1909 to 1935, Principal of Aberdeen University. Her mother was Lilian Adam Smith, daughter of Sir George Buchanan, FRS, in whose honour the Royal Society's Buchanan Medal was created. In 1919, Janet went to Cheltenham Ladies' College, and in 1923 went on to Somerville College, Oxford, where she read English, graduating in 1926.