Charles Alphonso Smith

Folklorist and professor of English literature Charles Alphonso Smith studies the spine of a book in this posed portrait photograph. Smith was the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of English at the University of Virginia from 1909–1917. The photograph was taken in Germany, where Smith was the Roosevelt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Berlin from 1910–1911. In 1913 Smith founded the Virginia Folklore Society, with the intention of sending folklorists around the state to collect regional versions of Old English ballads. In 1917, Smith left the University of Virginia to head the English department at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He held that position until his death in 1924.