The Autobiography of Samuel Smiles, LL.D.

The autobiography, published in 1905, of one of the most popular Victorian writers, whose Self-Help (1859) made his name.

Samuel Smiles (Author), Thomas Mackay (Edited by)

9781108057493, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 May 2013

478 pages, 2 b/w illus. 1 music example
21.6 x 14 x 2.7 cm, 0.6 kg

One of the most popular Victorian writers, Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) made his name in 1859 with the original self-improvement manual Self-Help. His highly successful multi-volume Lives of the Engineers (also reissued in this series) contained biographies of men who had, like him, achieved greatness not through privilege but through hard work. Left incomplete at his death, edited by the social theorist Thomas Mackay (1849–1912) and first published in 1905, his autobiography opens with a vivid description of the Scottish garrison town of his birth during the Napoleonic wars. In his later years he was a vocal supporter of state education, and the value of education was a constant theme throughout his life. He remembers his schooldays here with clarity, writing that 'a good education is equivalent to a good fortune'. Straightforward and unpretentious, this book will be of interest to historians and readers fascinated by the Victorian drive for self-improvement.

Preface
1. Boyhood and education
2. Youthful recollections
3. A student of medicine
4. Reform, the Lauder raid, the cholera
5. Surgeon in Haddington
6. A rolling stone gathers no moss
7. Returns to England: London, Sheffield
8. Editor of the Leeds Times
9. Life in Leeds
10. I leave political life
11. End of residence in Leeds
12. Newcastle and the neighbourhood
13. Secretary of the South-Eastern Railway
14. A successful author at last!
15. Railway work: Charing Cross line
16. Lives of the Engineers, and other works
17. The Huguenots: travels in France
18. The North Frisian Islands
19. Character, illness, a long rest
20. Thrift, The Scotch Naturalist, George Moore, etc.
21. Visit to Italy
22. Growing old
23. Appreciation from foreigners
24. Translations, Royat, Italy
Index.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]