George Smith (1833–1919) spent many years in India as an educator and editor of the Calcutta Review. He was a great supporter of missionary work and became secretary of the foreign mission committee of the Free Church of Scotland in 1870. He also wrote popular books of missionary biography including this two-volume Life of Alexander Duff (1879). Duff (1806–1878) was the first foreign missionary of the Church of Scotland and a leading figure in promoting Christian education in India. Duff pioneered what he called 'downward filter theory' which centred on educating India's upper caste through English in the hope that this elite group would then take responsibility for the evangelisation and modernisation of South Asia. This strategy did not produce many converts but Duff remained a well-regarded missionary and educationalist and was influential in the 1833 and 1854 educational reforms implemented by the British colonial government.