Janet Adam Smith

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.

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.

Shortly after, the family moved to a house in the Notting Hill area of London, which remained her home until her death in 1999.

As assistant editor, she dealt with articles on art, selected reviewers for literary books, and published new poetry, especially the work of W.H.

Dr Kate Murphy, Senior Lecturer in History at Bournemouth University, has said of Janet Adam Smith that "her six years on The Listener were without question of huge import to the journal and she left a legacy that was remembered for decades to come.

Finding herself with three small children in Penrith during the war, while Michael worked in London for the BBC's European Service, she wrote Mountain Holidays (1946; reissued 1996), in which she recalled pre-war climbs in Scotland and the Alps.

One of her successors, Karl Miller, recalled that "Janet used to take the trouble of writing to people to tell them what was wrong with their articles".

She also edited Michael Roberts's Collected Poems (1958) and, with her friend and fellow climber Nea Morin, translated from the French several mountaineering books, notably Maurice Herzog's Annapurna (1952).

[5] Imbued with the tradition of public service, she was a Trustee of the National Library of Scotland from 1950 to 1985, a remarkable record, and president of the Royal Literary Fund from 1976 to 1984.

When working in London in her twenties, she would sometimes travel back to Aberdeen taking a night train to Aviemore, Kingussie or Blair Atholl, and then walking over the Cairngorm Mountains to Braemar.

[citation needed] In the 1950s she organized many parties of friends and older children to the Alps to climb and to enjoy the pleasures of mobile holidays.

She did a number of classic Alpine routes, including the Mer de Glace face of the Aiguille du Grépon (1955) and the traverse of the Meije (1958).

Janet Adam Smith corrected misconceptions and restored him to his proper status as a serious writer and public figure.

Karl Miller was right in seeing her as being an heir of the Edinburgh Reviewers, for she was one of the last representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment, marrying clear and bold thinking to generous feeling.