Among the more arcane prose stylists of England in the twentieth century must be counted a naturalized American born in Millville, New Jersey, in 1865. Logan Pearsall Smith is most safely described as an essayist and critic, though his work is not easily classified. His best-known volume, Trivia, was published in 1902 and is made up of short, poemlike prose fragments. His work typically consists of epigrams: he was said to be the man who rediscovered the paragraph.

Smith's Edwardian aura of leisured amateurism may be explained partly by the fact that he never worked for his living as a writer. He subsisted on an independent though not lavish income inherited from his wealthy parents, Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith. In some ways Logan Pearsall Smith's reputation as a writer is slighter than that of his mother, who was a notable figure in the revival and temperance movements...