Frank E. Smedley

Frank E. Smedley (1818–1864), Francis Edward Smedley, was an English novelist. Disabled from childhood and unable to attend school, he was educated privately, and his novels drew on the school and university life he observed rather than lived. Frank Fairlegh, first serialized in Sharpe's London Magazine and published as a book in 1850 with illustrations by George Cruikshank, was a great success, and he followed it with Lewis Arundel and Harry Coverdale's Courtship, illustrated by Phiz. He also edited Sharpe's London Magazine for a time and wrote verse. His novels are lively, comic and full of practical jokes and sport.