Best Historical Novels About Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet

Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet

1787–1860

Sir Harry Smith was a British army officer whose career ranged from the Napoleonic Wars to India and southern Africa. He met and married the Spanish teenager Juana María de los Dolores de León after the storming of Badajoz, and she accompanied him through campaigns.

Smith later won distinction at Aliwal during the First Anglo-Sikh War and served as governor of the Cape Colony, where his policies contributed to frontier conflict. Ladysmith and other towns were named for the couple. Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet was born in Whittlesey and died in London.

Georgette Heyer’s The Spanish Bride turns Harry Smith’s real marriage to Juana de León into the continuous personal story of a Peninsular War novel, beginning when the brigade-major meets the young Spanish aristocrat after the storming of Badajoz and following the couple through the campaigns that end at Waterloo. Amarpal Singh’s The First Anglo-Sikh War picks up the later soldier rather than the romantic hero. It reconstructs the campaign of 1845–46 and gives particular weight to Smith’s victory at Aliwal, placing his command within the sequence from Mudki and Ferozeshah to Sobraon and the political settlement imposed on Lahore.

Periods

Periods linked to Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet

Peninsular War1807–1814 CE

Historical novels and book series featuring Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet (1 series)

Historical Romances in Order

by Georgette Heyer 9 books 4.3(16,123)

This collection brings together Georgette Heyer’s historical novels set outside her main Regency-romance sequence. The settings range from medieval England and France to the Norman Conquest, Elizabethan maritime conflict, the escape of Charles II and the Peninsular War. The list follows the ordering supplied by the Fantastic Fiction…