Self-help: With Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance (Rediscovered riches)

by SamuelSmiles (Author), Lord Harrisof High Cross (Foreword)

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.23

  Samuel Smiles is alive and well and available to lead us into the next decade...The Victorian moralist's universal best-seller...is a better guide to the prevailing political and economic orthodoxy than the incomprehensible texts of that other 19th century thinker, Karl Marx. Joe Rogaly, The Financial Times. The message of this book, which is readable and full of stunning quotations, is: God helps those who help themselves. A century after smiles' death we have had to learn this all over again - the hard way. Paul Johnson, The Daily Mail. Samuel Smiles' Self-Help is one of those books whose titles is so familiar that we think we have read it. To my shame I had not actually done so until it was splendidly reprinted this year. Peter Lilley, The Sunday Telegraph. Self-Help is about the nobility of strengthening one's character and should provide food for thought. Times Higher Education Supplement. As a storyteller [Smiles] is vivid, most of all when he conjures up the industrial revolutionaries: Wedgewood, Watt, Arkwright, George Stephenson and even Jonas Hanway, who taught City men their habit of carrying umbrellas. Christopher Fildes, The Spectator.

• Used

  Paperback
  1986

  $3.37

• Used

  Hardcover
  1986

  $3.23

• New

  Paperback
  2008

  $11.62

  '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. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.