William Smith was born in 1813 at Enfield England, to Nonconformist (Christians of England and Wales, who would not "conform", or follow the authority and customs of the Church of England) parents; their Evangelical stand seemed that it would lead William directly into theology, but his was to be a convoluted path, he was first apprenticed to a lawyer.

Young Mr. Smith taught himself the classics in his spare time, and when he entered University College, his hard work paid off, he won both the Greek and Latin prizes. In 1830, he was entered at Gray's Inn (In order for Smith to qualify as a barrister, he had to join one of the Inns; the Inns having their origins as lodging houses, developing into Legal educational institutions. He then had to pass the Bar Vocational Course and complete 12 of the Gray’s Inn's qualifying sessions), but soon he gave up his study of the law for a position at University College School, and began to write on classical subjects.

Next, Smith turned his attentions to lexicography. The Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities was his first attempt, that volume was published in 1842; most of it being written by himself. In 1849 he followed up with the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, and in 1850, he published the first of his school dictionaries. Then in 1853 he began the Principia series, which was a striking and distinctive step in the University College Schools’ teaching of Greek and Latin. It was also in 1853 that William Smith became a classical examiner to the University of London, a position, he held for sixteen years. In 1857, he wrote and edited Greek and Roman Geography, and in this work leading scholars of the day were happy to associate themselves with him and his labor. Smith then released a Greek history which was his own work, entitled: the Students' Manuals of History and Literature.

Of course the most important of the books edited and written by William Smith were those that dealt with Biblical subjects. Smith’s Bible Dictionary, then known as the Dictionary of the Bible which was completed from 1860 through 1865. In 1875, with Charles Müller and Sir George Grove, William Smith published An Atlas of Ancient Geography, Biblical and Classical, to Illustrate the Dictionary of the Bible and the Classical Dictionaries. He then collaborated with Archdeacon Samuel Cheetham on the Dictionary of Christian Antiquities between 1875-1880, while working on the former he began working jointly with Dr Henry Wace on the Dictionary of Christian Biography, which was started in 1877 and finished 1887.