SMITH, Charles. The Antient and Present State of The County of Kerry. Containing a natural, civil, ecclesiastical, historical, and topographical description thereof. Embellished with a portrait frontispiece of the author; a large folding map of the County; a panoramic view of the Lakes of Killarney taken from the North; Inny Bridge; Scelig; Plan of Traly and Galerus near Smeriwick.

Dublin: Printed for the Author, n.d. [1756]. Crown octavo. First edition. pp. xxi, [1], 23-419, 5 (index). Contemporary full sprinkled calf, spine professionally rebacked, preserving the original elaborately gilt decorated backstrip; board-edges hatched in gilt; splash-marbled endpapers. All edges yellow. A very good copy.

Charles Smith (1715?-1762), apothecary, topographer and writer, was born in County Waterford. Details of his life remain obscure, but he was educated in medicine and worked as an apothecary in Lismore and Dungarvan. He is remembered as a pioneer of Irish topography and local history. His first work, The Antient and Present State of the County of Down (1744), was produced in collaboration with Walter Harris and dedicated to Hans Sloane, and was the first thorough history of an Irish county. The work was intended as the first of a series of such surveys and led to the foundation in 1744 of the Physico-Historical Society in Dublin. Under the auspices of this body Smith proceeded to publish accounts of counties Waterford (1746), Cork (1750), and Kerry (1756). Information was gathered by corresponding with local residents, and the books were marketed to an educated upper and middle-class readership keen to improve their knowledge of the Irish countryside and economy. His work remains an invaluable source for Irish historians. In 1756 he was a founding member and first secretary of the Medico-Philosophical Society in Dublin. He died in Bristol in July 1762.

[Cat 160]