Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Smiles, Samuel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199552452 ISBN 13: 9780199552450

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2008

Synopsis

'The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength.'

A bestseller immediately after its publication in 1859, Self-Help propelled its author to fame and rapidly became one of Victorian Britain's most important statements on the allied virtues of hard work, thrift, and perseverance. Interpreted by some as a paean to personal avarice, Smiles's most celebrated book is in fact a practical and engaging tribute to the working- and lower-middle classes, in whom he identified the capacity for self-improvement and for whom he tirelessly advocated the right of social advancement. Part practical guide, part proverbial testament, part secular hagiography, this literary hybrid turns biography into an inspirational medium that awakens readers to their own potential and instils the desire to succeed. Smiles's book is the precursor of today's motivational and self-help literature, although its vision is significantly more cosmopolitan than that of most books in a still-expanding genre.

This edition includes a fully indexed glossary to the more than 750 names discussed by Smiles.
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About this title

Review

Much in Self-Help is still stimulating. Its central precept - the value of hard work, ingenuity, perseverance, thrift, a solid education - is in tune with American notions of workfare, not to mention the Labour party's espousal ... of a shift in the mission statement of the British social security system from 'hand-out' to 'hand-up'. Welfare financed by taxation is no longer chic. -- The Financial Times, 29.06.96

So far from a shallow exposition of 'economic man', Self-Help is an uplifting study of individual morality brought to life by personal examples. -- Lord Harris, The Times, 29.06.96

About the Author

For the much of his career, Smiles advocated individual self improvement. Smiles' self-help books have been cited as influential on the New Thought Movement in late 19th century America and England, and, in particular, on the career of the New Thought author Orison Swett Marden, who said that his early ambition had been to become "the Samuel Smiles of America." This classic book has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism".

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199552452
• ISBN 13: 9780199552450
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432
• Editor: Sinnema Peter W.