Elizabeth Smith (translator)

Elizabeth Smith (December 1776 – 7 August 1806) was an English translator, linguist, and Biblical and Oriental scholar.

They moved back to Burn Hall till June 1785, when the father, who was partner in a West Country banking firm, took Piercefield Park, near Chepstow, Monmouthshire.

[1] The declaration of war by France in February 1793 produced a financial crisis which proved fatal to several banks, her father's among the number.

Elizabeth spent seven or eight months at the fashionable spa resort Bath, where her friend Mary Hunt encouraged her to study German and botany.

She began Latin in November 1794, and by February 1795 had "read Cæsar's Commentaries, Livy, and some volumes of Cicero", and was "very impatient to begin Virgil".

In the summer of 1799 the family settled at Ballitore, County Kildare, moving in May 1801 to Coniston (then in Lancashire, now in Cumbria), where Smith spent the rest of her life.

Among her philological collections were lists of words in Welsh, Chinese, and African dialects, with some Icelandic studies.