Wilbur Addison Smith (9 January 1933 – 13 November 2021) was a Northern Rhodesian-born British-South African novelist specializing in historical fiction about international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries.
He acknowledged his publisher Charles Pick's advice to "write about what you know best";[4] his work focuses on southern African ways of life, with emphasis on hunting, mining, romance, and conflict.
[7] Together with his younger sister he spent the first years of his life on his parents' cattle ranch, comprising 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of forest, hills and savanna.
His mother loved books, read to him every night and later gave him novels of escape and excitement, which piqued his interest in fiction; however, his father dissuaded him from pursuing writing.
[8] While in Natal, he continued to be an avid reader and had the good fortune to have an English master who made him his protégé and would discuss the books Smith had read that week.
[9] He felt that he never "fitted in" with the people, goals and interests of the other students at Michaelhouse, but he did start a school newspaper for which he wrote the entire content, except for the sports pages.
During the university holidays he worked in the gold mines and over the 1953–54 break with his friend Hillary Currey on a fishing boat based out of Walvis Bay and whalers.
[2][14] With spare time in the evening and access to plenty of pens and paper through his job at the Inland Revenue Service, Smith turned back to his love of writing.
[2] In April 1963, he sold his first story, "On Flinder’s Face", under the pen name Steven Lawrence to Argosy magazine for £70, twice his monthly salary.
[citation needed] After reading the manuscript Smith's agent rang Charles Pick, the deputy managing director of William Heinemann and convinced him to look at the novel.
Impressed after just the first chapter, over the weekend Pick gave it to the company’s sales director Tim Manderson, who agreed that it should be published.
[22] Smith did not originally envision the Courtney family from When the Lion Feeds would become a series, but he returned to them for The Sound of Thunder (1966), taking the lead characters up to after the Second Boer War.
[23] At the time he was writing The Sound of Thunder in a caravan in the Inyanga mountains in November 1965 Ian Smith unilaterally declared Rhodesian independence.
The resulting political violence forced Smith to return to the relative safety of Salisbury where he continued working on the novel during the day, while serving at night as a member of the reserve of the Rhodesian British South Africa Police.
Around this time, Smith also wrote an original screenplay, The Last Lion (1971) which was filmed in South Africa with Jack Hawkins; it was not a success.
[citation needed] Smith admitted to being tempted by movie money at this stage of his career but deliberately wrote something that was a complete change of pace, The Sunbird (1972).
He then returned to the Courtney family of his first novel with A Sparrow Falls (1977), set during and after World War I. Hungry as the Sea (1978) and Wild Justice (1979) were contemporary stories—the latter was his first best seller in the USA.
Elephant Song (1991) was a more contemporary tale, but then he kicked off a new cycle of novels set in Ancient Egypt: River God (1993) and The Seventh Scroll (1995).
In a press release Smith said: "For the past few years my fans have made it very clear that they would like to read my novels and revisit my family of characters faster than I can write them.
[31] In 2021 Picadilly Press published two books for young readers by Wilbur Smith, co-written with Chris Wakling – Cloudburst[32] and Thunderbolt.
[34] His new publisher announced at the time of the signing that they would continue the existing release schedule, instigated by HarperCollins, of two titles per year with a number of co-authors, including Corban Addison, David Churchill, Tom Harper and Imogen Robertson.
[35] Smith was working for his father when he married his first wife, Anne Rennie, a secretary, in a Presbyterian Church on 5 July 1957 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia.
"[41] Smith then met a young divorcée named Danielle Thomas, who had been born in the same town and had read all of his books, and thought they were wonderful.
[46] After having visited it for a number of years, he purchased 27 acres (11 ha) of land at the southern end of the island of Cerf in the Seychelles in 1989.
[2][1] After developing the property over a number of years to include three houses, boats, emergency generators and desalination plants, he sold it in 2001 together with three motorboats.
[48][5] His website announced that "He leaves behind him a treasure-trove of novels, as well as completed and yet to be published co-authored books and outlines for future stories.
The books are set in the following time periods: The Ancient Egypt series is an historical fiction series based in large part on Pharaoh Memnon's time, addressing both his story and that of his mother Lostris through the eyes of his mother's slave Taita, and mixing in elements of the Hyksos' domination and eventual overthrow.
[citation needed] * The Seventh Scroll is set in modern times but reflects the other books in the series via archaeological discoveries.
[53] As a child, Smith enjoyed reading Biggles books and Just William (1922), as well as the works of John Buchan, C. S. Forester and H. Rider Haggard.
I travel and hunt and scuba dive and climb mountains and try to follow the advice of Rudyard Kipling; "Fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run."