Frank Smedley

He was born with deformed feet, a disability that impaired his mobility and prevented him from attending regular school.

[note 1] His cousin, the poet Menella Bute Smedley, later kept house for him and acted as his secretary.

Smedley contributed his first book, Scenes from the Life of a Private Pupil, anonymously to Sharpe's London Magazine in 1846-1848.

The book was republished in 1860 and Smedley purchased the copyright from Burbury to allow this and recording its history in that edition's introduction.

[3] Smedley's first essay proved so successful that it was expanded into Frank Fairlegh, and published in book form in 1850.