Samuel Smiles Founder of The Self Help Book
The Writer of the Original Self Help Publication
Jul 3, 2009
Born in 1812 in Scotland, Samuel Smiles embodied the Victorian work ethic. The third of eleven children, he was a biographer, historian, and journalist who wrote obsessively, finally hitting the jackpot with Self Help. Published on the 24 November 1859 – the same day as Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, it took 19th Century Britain by storm.
Today, self help publishing is an industry worth many millions of dollars worldwide and the idea of the inner self providing answers to life's questions can be directly traced to Smiles' original work.
Massive Sales of Self Help by Samuel Smiles
Within a year of publication Self Help had gone through five editions and sold over 20,000 copies. By the time of Smile's death in 1904 it had accumulated over 500,000 sales and is still in print in countries such as China, Turkey and Japan.
The basic tenet of Smiles' book was that hard work wins all, the reader was told by the simple act of hard work all could achieve their greatest dreams. It consisted of biographies of inspirational individuals such as artists, industrialists, writers, and politicians. Smiles was keen to show that ordinary working people had the capability to achieve greatness. His secret of success was simple - dedication and intense hard work. He saw some of the biographies contained as akin to gospels for success.
Genius is Overrated; Hard Work is the Formula for Success
Smiles ideas gave air to his feeling that the common man could achieve much by ordinary toil and not be in wait for receipt of some heavenly gift. Genius was not particularly admired by Smiles. According to him, those seen as artistic geniuses were simple people who had worked thousands and thousands of hours to achieve excellence in their given field.
"Excellence in art, as with everything else, can only be achieved by painstaking labour," Smiles said.
Successful people had encountered many failures and disappointments in reaching the pinnacle of their skills. Work, work, work was seen by Smiles as their great virtue, not the vague mystical concept of genius.
Funeral Cortege for the Funeral of Samuel Smiles
When Queen Victoria died in 1901 there was a huge cortege for her funeral. When Samuel Smiles died three years later, his cortege was second only to that of the deceased monarch. A telling testament to his popularity.
Self Help by Samuel Smiles
In total book sales for the entire 19th century, Self Help by Samuel Smiles was second only to The Bible and many Victorians kept copies of each book side by side. Subsequent books on character, thrift and duty sold well but never reached the heights of Self Help.
Samuel Smiles is regarded by some as the champion of diligence and hard work and by others as a narrow and obsessed workaholic who saw no virtue in the reflective or ethereal. What cannot be denied is that his book Self Help was a publishing phenomenon.
Sources:
- BBC Radio 4
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