Samuel Smiles

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Samuel Smiles (23 December 1812 – 16 April 1904), was a Scottish author and reformer.

Early life

Born in Haddington, the son of Samuel Smiles of Haddington and Janet Wilson of Dalkeith, Smiles was one of eleven surviving children. The family were strict Cameronians. He left school at the age of 14 and was apprenticed to a doctor, an arrangement that eventually enabled Smiles to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. His father died in the cholera epidemic of 1832, but Smiles was enabled to continue with his studies, supported by his mother who kept running the family shop selling hardware, books, etc, firm in the belief that "The Lord will provide". Her example, working ceaselessly to support herself and his nine younger siblings, was a strong influence on his future life, though he developed a more benign and tolerant outlook somewhat at odds with his Cameronian forebears ^[1]. While studying and after graduating, he campaigned for parliamentary reform, contributing articles to the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle and the Leeds Times.

Samuel married Sarah Ann Holmes Dixon in Leeds in December 7, 1843. They had three daughters, Janet, Edith and Lillian, and two sons, William and Samuel. In his late teens, Samuel junior contracted a lung disease, and his father was advised to send him on a long sea voyage. The letters young Samuel wrote home, and the log he kept of his journey to Australia and America between February 1869 and March 1871, were later edited by his father and published in London in 1877, under the title 'A Boy's Voyage Round the World'.

Samuel senior's grandchildren include Sir Walter Smiles, an Ulster Unionist Party MP. Through this family, Samuel Smiles is also the great-great-grandfather of popular explorer Bear Grylls.

Career

In 1838, he was invited to become the editor for the Leeds Times, a position which he accepted and filled until 1845. In May 1840, Smiles became Secretary to the Leeds Parliamentary Reform Association, an organisation that held to the six objectives of Chartism: universal suffrage for all men over the age of 21; equal-sized electoral districts; voting by secret ballot; an end to the need of MPs to qualify for Parliament, other than by winning an election; pay for MPs; and annual Parliaments.

In 1845, Samuel Smiles left the Leeds Times and became secretary to the Leeds and Thirsk Railway and then, nine years later, the South Eastern Railway. In 1866, he left this position to be president of the National Provident Institution, but left in 1871, after suffering a debilitating stroke. He recovered from the stroke, eventually learning to read and write again, and he even wrote books after his recovery. He died in Kensington and was buried in Brompton Cemetery.

As editor of the Leeds Times, he advocated radical causes ranging from women's suffrage to free trade to parliamentary reform. But by the late 1840s, Smiles became concerned about the advocation of physical force by Chartists Feargus O'Connor and George Julian Harney, though he seems to have agreed with them that the movement's current tactics were not effective, saying that "mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society." In the 1850s he seems to have completely given up on parliamentary reform and other structural changes as a means of social advance. For the rest of his career, he advocated individual self improvement.

Writings

Samuel Smiles (1891) by George Reid

Smiles is best known today as the writer of books extolling virtues of self help, and biographies lauding the achievements of "heroic" engineers.

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"

Most of Smiles' biographies were contained in the four volume work, 'Lives of the Engineers', but he also wrote many other biographies. He selected the topics of his biographies as a means of emphasising his thesis of self help. These works have come to exemplify Victorian values for the modern reader. He received some criticism in his own time from socialists because of his emphasis on individual achievement.

He was a prolific author of books and articles. The following is an incomplete list of his most important work. See Jarvis, below, for a full listing of his writings.

Self help topics

• Self-Help, London, 1859
• Character, London, 1871
• Thrift, London, 1875
• Duty, London, 1880
• Life and Labour, London 1887

Biographical works

• The Life of George Stephenson, London, 1857
• The Story of The Life of George Stephenson, London, 1859 (abridgement of the above)
• Brief biographies, Boston, 1860 (articles reprinted from periodicals such as the Quarterly Review)
• Lives of the Engineers, 3 vol, London 1862
  • Vol 1, Early engineers - James Brindley, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, Sir Hugh Myddleton, Capt John Perry
  • Vol 2, Harbours, Lighthouses and Bridges - John Smeaton and John Rennie, (1761-1821)
  • Vol 3, History of Roads - John Metcalfe and Thomas Telford
• Industrial Biography, London, 1863

Includes lives of Andrew Yarranton, Benjamin Huntsman, Dud Dudley, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Clement, etc..

• Boulton and Watt, London, 1865
• The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches and Industries in England and Ireland, London, 1867
• Lives of the Engineers, new ed. in 5 vols, London, 1874

(includes the lives of Stephenson and Boulton and Watt)

• Life of a Scotch Naturalist: Thomas Edward, London, 1875
• George Moore, Merchant and Philanthropist, London & New York, 1878
• Robert Dick, Baker of Thurso, Geologist and Botanist, London, 1878
• Men of Invention and Industry, London, 1884

Phineas Pett, Francis Pettit Smith, John Harrison, John Lombe, William Murdoch, Frederick Koenig,The Walter family of The Times, William Clowes (Printer), Charles Bianconi, and chapters on Industry in Ireland, Shipbuilding in Belfast, Astronomers and students in humble life

• James Nasmyth, engineer, an autobiography, ed. Samuel Smiles, London, 1885
• A Publisher and his Friends. Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray, London, 1891
• Jasmin. Barber, Poet, Philanthropist, London, 1891
• Josiah Wedgwood, his Personal History, London, 1894
• The Autobiography of Samuel Smiles, LLD, ed. T. Mackay, London, 1905 - New York edition

The growth of industrial archaeology and history in Britain from the 1960s caused a number of these titles to be reprinted, and a number are available on the Web from such sources as Project Gutenberg, noted below.

The reliability of Smiles' work

Jarvis maintains that Smiles should never be taken as the 'last word' on the lives of Victorian engineers. Aside from the accuracy of his statements (it is known, for example, that he was prone to making selective quotations from documents to show his subjects in the best light), there is the balance of his coverage. He tended to concentrate on civil engineering, to the detriment of mechanical engineering and invention. Present-day readers who rely upon an uncritical reading of Smiles may therefore be left with a lop-sided view of industrialisation during the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian era in Britain.

References

Further reading

• Briggs, Asa (1968). "Samuel Smiles and the Gospel of Work" in Victorian People, Pelican, Harmondsworth.
• Jarvis, Adrian (1997). Samuel Smiles and the Construction of Victorian Values. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-1128-X. 

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Samuel Smiles Project

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Samuel Smiles

• Works by Samuel Smiles at Project Gutenberg
• Character by Samuel Smiles in html format
• Commentary on Self-Help by Tom Butler-Bowdon