She was born on March 9, 1891 in Smethport, Pennsylvania, United States, one of two children born to Charles A. Smith and Jane Haskell. As a child, Smith was an avid reader. According to her mother, little Mildred would read bottle labels if there wasn't a book handy. While Smith was a young girl, her family moved to Buffalo, New York.
After graduating from Lafayette High School there, Smith earned her B. A. in 1914 from Wellesley College; she concentrated on English literature, history, and philosophy. She later enrolled in George Lyman Kittredge's Shakespeare course at Radcliffe College (then part of Harvard University).
She also completed her M. A. at Wellesley in 1922; her thesis was a study on Shakespeare's use of English travel narratives in writing the The Tempest.
After her graduation from Wellesley, Smith and her aunt visited Europe and had the exciting misfortune of being there when World War I began. Once safely returned to the United States, Smith served as an assistant in English literature at Wellesley from 1915 to 1916. She then taught at the Buffalo Seminary, a private girls' secondary school, for one year and later taught English at a private school in Plainfield, New Jersey. Smith found teaching repetitive, and she longed for a more exciting career.
Moving to New York City, she got a job with the Woman's Press, the publication department of the YWCA. In 1920 she became an assistant to Frederic G. Melcher, editor of Publisher's Weekly. She was recommended by Bessie Graham of The Bookman's Manual, a trade publication. Graham, who knew Smith's work at the YWCA, told Melcher that Smith was a "bright girl who had a fine education. " Although Smith had no experience with magazines or publishing, she learned her job quickly. Smith was responsible for the day-to-day operations of Publisher's Weekly, and Melcher was the policymaker.
From 1920 until 1933 she served as the assistant editor: from 1933 until 1959, she was coeditor. She was promoted to editor in chief in 1959 and held that position until she retired in 1967. Smith was a director of R. R. Bowker, which owned Publisher's Weekly, from 1934 until 1967 and served as a secretary from 1935 until 1967.
Early in her career, Smith began a file on thousands of bookstores in the country. She developed friendships with many of the owners and visited them during her extensive travels. She also sent members of her staff to maintain a personal link with this branch of the publishing industry. Smith was responsible for grooming such future literary figures as Josiah Titzell, Weldon Reynolds, and Sandford Cobb.
During World War II, Smith was an active member of the National Book and Author War Bond Committee.
In 1967 Smith retired as editor in chief. She died in King's Point, New York.
Mildred Catharine Smith, serving as the secretary of the Publisher's Weekly, modernized the magazine's layout and, in an effort to make it a news magazine and trade journal, solicited the best booksellers, publishers, and designers to submit articles. Smith was the first, who developed two sections in Publisher's Weekly: "You Meet Such Interesting People" (now "People") and "Tips" (now "Trade News"). In 1944, she received the Constance Lindsay Skinner Award of the Women's National Book Association. Smith also received the Irita Van Doren Award from the American Booksellers Association, the Publishers' Publicity Association, and the Publishers' Ad Club in 1968.
Smith never married.
