Wilbur Addison Smith is a best-selling novelist. His writings include 16th and 17th century tales about the founding of the southern territories of Africa and the subsequent adventures and international intrigues relevant to these settlements.
Background
Smith was born in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia, now Kabwe, Zambia. His father was a metal worker who opened a sheet metal factory and then bought a cattle ranch.
As a baby, Smith was sick with cerebral malaria for ten days, but made a full recovery. He spent the first years of his life on his father's cattle ranch which consisted of 12,000 hectares of forest, hills and savannah. On the ranch his companions were the sons of the ranch workers, small black boys with the same interests and preoccupations as Smith. With his companions he ranged through the bush, hiking, hunting, and trapping birds and small mammals
Education
He attended Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in 1954. He subsequently found work with the Inland Revenue Service.
Smith turned back to fiction and this time he determined to write it, and to his delight found that he was able to sell his first story to 'Argosy' magazine for seventy pounds, which was twice his monthly salary. His first attempt at a novel, The Gods First Make Mad, was rejected so for a time he returned to work as an accountant, until the urge to write once again
Career
His first successful novel, When the Lion Feeds, was published in 1964, written while he worked for Salisbury Inland Revenue. It tells the story of a young man, Sean Courtney and his twin brother Garry. The character's name was a tribute to Smith's grandfather, Courtney James Smith, who had commanded a Maxim gun team during the Zulu Wars. Courtney James Smith had a magnificent mustache and could tell wonderful stories that had helped inspire Smith. Also he wrote about hunting, gold mining, carousing, women, love, sex, and hate.
Views
Quotations:
"Write only about those things you know well." "Do not write for your publishers or for your imagined readers. Write only for yourself."