Samuel Smiles was a Victorian doctor, campaigner and writer who during his long life wrote 30 books and hundreds of articles which were all well received. His most famous and most controversial book was entitled Self-Help; with Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance, which was published in 1859 and sold thousands of copies. Self-Help reflected the viewpoints and values that Smiles held dear and was in essence a blueprint for coping with life in the Victorian era, especially the adjustment to the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Smiles was fascinated by invention and progress and believed that by acquiring the right skills and adopting the right attitudes everyone could improve their position in life, including even the poor and most disadvantaged in society. He therefore believed in hard work, self-discipline, perseverance, education and thrift so that any individual could improve their moral and material standing.

Indeed, the historian Asa Briggs said of Self-Help that there are few books which have reflected ‘the spirit of the age more faithfully and successfully than Self-Help’ and in this sense it was groundbreaking. Smiles has been seen as the grandfather of the very popular self-help genre. Self-Help, however, has also been criticised as patronising and critical towards the Victorian poor as it suggests that the poor are to blame for their lowly position in society rather than them being victims of difficult circumstances. Failure to work hard, adopt thrifty habits, including the control of alcohol consumption as advocated by the temperance movement, and save for a rainy day meant that the poor should have realised that they only had themselves to blame for their plight. In fairness to Smiles, Self-Help was written at a time when he was frustrated by the need for political reform such as universal suffrage and the introduction of formal education. Therefore, Smiles switched his focus to moulding the individual character rather than seeking actual reform, which went hand in hand with the Victorian value of self- improvement.

Born in 1812, Smiles was the son of a shopkeeper and his wife who lived in the small town of Haddington in the Scottish lowlands. One of 11 children, life was tough, but money was carefully controlled and so Smiles was fortunate enough to be able to attend the local grammar school despite his lowly background. It was at school where Smiles developed his love of learning and a quest for knowledge which would sustain him throughout his life. Aged 14, he was indentured for five years to a Dr Lewins and his partner so that he could study medicine and eventually become a doctor. During this time, he had access to the libraries in Haddington and soaked up knowledge on a variety of subjects including history, literature, theology, travel and languages, which stimulated his ambition to write. In 1829 Smiles moved to Leith near Edinburgh to formally study medicine and again he was fortunate in that his family agreed to fund his studies even when his father died after contracting cholera. It was while he lived near Edinburgh that his political viewpoints began to take shape. Smiles was a big advocate of electoral reform and suffrage for all adult males.

Once he had qualified as a doctor, Smiles moved back to Haddington where he dealt daily with the poor. He admired their stoicism and he noted how many were determined to educate their children by paying for private lessons despite their poverty. Soon he became bored as he found life as a doctor somewhat monotonous and he especially hated having idle time which was the opposite of his strong work ethic. He therefore turned his attention to writing a book for mothers advising them how to raise their children. This was published in 1836 and marked the start of his career as a writer. The book gave advice on healthy living including a good diet, exercise and fresh air. It was as a result of this book that Smiles was approached by Thomas Murray, the editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle and asked to submit his work to the newspaper. Soon, Smiles was writing regularly for the Chronicle and was establishing his reputation as a writer. He was influenced by Benthamite utilitarianism where actions are seen to be morally correct if they promote happiness and pleasure as opposed to unhappiness and pain. Meanwhile, he decided to travel and went to Holland and Germany where he soaked up the culture and history of the nations, which led to a lifelong love of travel as well as an interest in travel writing.

By 1838 Smiles had moved to London, where his political views continued to develop. He soon became further influenced by Jeremy Bentham and believed in education, reform of Parliament, free trade and religious liberalism. In many respects he was a Chartist at heart especially because he believed in universal male suffrage, but he disliked how Chartists often resorted to violence, having been a witness at one of their meetings. His journalistic reputation meant that he was offered the job of editor at the Leeds Times newspaper, which gave him a voice for his political beliefs. These included supporting the repeal of the Corn Laws since they kept the price of bread unfairly high in order to benefit the upper classes at the expense of the lower classes.

In his autobiography, written when he was 80, Smiles described this period of his life as his most happy as well as his most productive. He married and started a family but politically it was a time of much change as during the 1840s there was much call for reform, which led to frequent meetings and debates, an environment in which Smiles thrived. Smiles saw the purpose of his role at the Leeds Times as promoting the problems of the poor, so he visited slum areas, which strengthened his resolve to effect change through his writing and attendance at rallies and campaigns. He also disagreed with the terms and conditions of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 where those in dire need had no option other than to enter the workhouse.

Smiles was also a big believer in progress and believed in the notion of the self-made man who would serve as a role model and positive example to those struggling in society. He was excited by machinery and engineering, and this inspired him to write articles and later books on men such as George Stephenson who he admired greatly. In this sense the biographies that he went on to write were essentially self-help books and some of his more overt self-help books such as Thrift were also essentially biographies because he gave numerous examples of ordinary men who had achieved greatness through hard work and a determination to succeed.

Portfolio career
However, over time Smiles became disillusioned with calling for political reform and he also found the day-to-day grind of being an editor at the Leeds Times tedious. He therefore decided that he would have a portfolio career in which he combined journalism, medical practice and book writing. To this effect he set up a successful doctor’s practice in Holbeck and carried on writing, including a book on the history of Ireland for which he had much sympathy following the potato famine and because he believed that the Irish were coerced by British government. However, by 1845 Smiles decided that he needed a full-time day job which would provide him with the means to comfortably provide for his family, but which would also allow him to write in his leisure time. He therefore accepted the post of assistant secretary to the Leeds Thirsk Railway before later becoming its company secretary. For the next 25 years he led a two-part life as a dedicated employee at the railway company and as a writer and thinker in his spare time.

Indeed, he began to write for several magazines including the quarterly magazine of the Grand United Order of Oddfellows (which promoted cooperation and self-help for working men) and The People’s Journal in which he wrote about various topics including the importance of benefit societies. Eventually his job at the railway came to an end following a merger so he was forced to temporarily move to Newcastle to help with the amalgamation of the company with the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway. He found the work to be uninspiring and so he turned his attention to writing biographies and began researching the life and career of George Stephenson. Smiles also started to work on some old notes about the notion of self-help with a view to writing what would eventually become the book entitled Self-Help .

Once his work in Newcastle was completed, Smiles was able to procure the role of secretary to The South Eastern Railway and so he moved his family to London. He also submitted Self-Help to a publisher but on this occasion, it was rejected. Undeterred, he focused his attentions on researching his biography of Stephenson. It was a mammoth task and involved much research, but it proved to be a huge success. Published in 1857, it was a resounding success, which was a testimony to both Smiles’ skill as a writer but also for the way he had portrayed Stephenson as a self-made man who had overcome his poor background to succeed and invent the locomotive. Aged 45, Smiles had now fully established himself as a successful author.

Following the success of his Stephenson biography, he decided to submit Self-Help to Murrays, who had published his biography, and to his great delight they agreed to publish it. Self-Help proved to be a very popular book and sold thousands of copies both at home and abroad. It was also translated into various languages. Nevertheless, Smiles never regarded it as his most important book and preferred to concentrate on researching and writing biographies. The appeal of Self-Help, though, was that it was an easy book from which to quote, and it also broke advice down into bite-sized chunks to which readers could readily relate. His later works included various biographies including one about the lives of Boulton and Watts and their invention of the steam engine. He later also wrote more self-help books including Thrift (1875) and Duty  (1880).

In many ways Smiles was a victim of his own success, as years of overwork caused his health to suffer. A typical day would involve three or four hours of writing and study after a full working day at the railway company. Smiles soon found himself having difficulty sleeping and began to self-medicate with a drug to induce sleep but it inevitably became too much for him and lead to an almost inevitable nervous breakdown. He now switched his day job from the railways and went to work at the National Provident in 1866, where the work was less demanding. Nonetheless, his habit of overworking led to a huge stroke in 1871 which left him unable to speak or move. His recovery was slow and frustrating but it made him realise that he could no longer be both an employee and a writer and so he resigned from his post. Eventually, Smiles was able to gradually continue with his writing career and although he extolled the virtues of hard work, he now knew that overwork could pose a real danger too.

The success of his book Thrift surprised him as he preferred to see himself as an historian and a biographer rather than a self-help expert. Still, he continued to write well into old age and his last book, a biography of Josiah Wedgwood, was published in 1894 when he was aged 82. Smiles eventually died in 1904, aged 91, having outlived his wife Sarah by four years and two of his five children.

Samuel Smiles was a gifted author, speaker and advocate of self-help, whose values of persistence and self-reliance were very much in keeping with the Victorian age. He demonstrated through his career and his writing success that whatever your background or social class it was possible to improve yourself by adhering to these cherished principles. Ultimately, Smiles believed passionately in the subjects about which he wrote about and by promoting the principles of self-help and self-reliance he left a positive legacy for many generations to come. {