Samuel Smiles
Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) was a Scottish physician, author, and prominent advocate for self-improvement and individual initiative. Born in Haddington, East Lothian, he was raised in a large family and initially trained in medicine, obtaining his M.D. from Edinburgh University. Smiles became notable for his writings, particularly his influential book "Self-Help," published in 1859, which emphasized the value of character and personal responsibility, often inspiring readers through accounts of successful figures in history. His passion for engineering and innovation led him to document the lives of key figures in the field, resulting in his major work, "Lives of the Engineers." Despite facing criticism from some literary circles, Smiles is recognized as a significant chronicler of the transformative effects of technology during the Victorian era. He also wrote extensively on topics such as thrift, duty, and moral character. Smiles' legacy is that of a visionary who celebrated the potential for human achievement and the importance of perseverance. He passed away in 1904, leaving behind a substantial body of work that continues to resonate with themes of self-improvement and determination.
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Samuel Smiles
Author
- Born: December 23, 1812
- Birthplace: Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland
- Died: April 16, 1904
- Place of death: Kensington, England
Biography
Samuel Smiles was born on December 23, 1812, at Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland, one of the eleven children of papermaker Samuel Smiles and Janet Wilson Smiles. His paternal grandfather was an elder in the Cameronian sect, whose members had suffered persecution in the time of King Charles II, and Smiles inherited a certain secessionist spirit of defiance, although he rejected his family’s stern Calvinist beliefs and eventually became a Unitarian.
Smiles was educated at Patrick Hardie’s school in Haddington and Haddington Academy before being bound as an apprentice to a firm of medical practitioners in 1826. In 1829, he moved to Leith, Scotland, with one of the partners. He attended Edinburgh University in 1829 and obtained his M.D. in 1832. He set up a practice in Haddington and also began contributing to the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle, writing in support of radical political issues. In 1838, he published Physical Education: Or, The Nurture and Management of Children, Founded on the Study of Their Nature and Constitution, which was reprinted in 1868 and 1905. He sold his medical practice in 1838 and set off for Hull to board a ship for the Continent, traveling up the Rhine River. He returned via London and Sheffield and then accepted a job in Leeds, England, as editor of the Leeds Times.
In 1840, Smiles attended the opening of a new railway and met George Stephenson, the inventor of a steam-powered locomotive. Seized with enthusiasm for the transformative technology, Smiles became secretary of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway in 1845 and secretary of the Southeastern Railway in 1854. He married Sarah Ann Holmes, the daughter of a Leeds contractor, with whom he had five children.
Smiles wrote abundantly, especially for Eliza Cook’s Journal, although he was now a liberal rather than a radical, having parted ideological company with the Chartists. A lecture he delivered in 1845 was reworked as a short book in 1855, but it was initially rejected for publication. It eventually appeared in 1859 as Self-Help: With Illustrations of Conduct and Character, and it became a huge best-seller, enormously popular as a school prize. It offered brief accounts of the lives of great men, with the admonition “Do thou likewise.”
Smiles had published a biography of Stephenson in 1857, and he went on to produce his masterpiece, the three-volume Lives of the Engineers, with an Account of Their Principal Works: Comprising Also a History of Inland Communication in Britain (1861-1862), whose revised editions of 1874 and 1904 eventually inflated the work to five volumes. He wrote other biographies of a similar sort, including a book on inventors Mathew Boulton and James Watt, and he also produced a biography of the Provençal poet Jacme Jasmin and a history of the Huguenots in England and Ireland.
Smiles retired from the railway business in 1866 but continued to write copiously; in addition to biographies, he produced a series of homiletic tracts on character, thrift, and duty. He also traveled widely in Europe. He and his family moved to Pembroke Gardens in Kensington in 1874, and he died there on April 16, 1904. His autobiography appeared the following year.
Smiles was the chief chronicler and celebrant of the heroic age of engineering, having realized the extent to which technology was transforming Victorian England into a very different society. He was widely mocked by literary men who considered his concerns vulgar and his manner unpolished, but he was one of the most farsighted and levelheaded men of his generation.