Samuel Smiles

 

"Life has its dark side and its bright side; It is up to us to choose the one that pleases us the most."

Scottish author and political reformer Samuel Smiles was born on December 23, 1812 in Haddington, the eldest of eleven children. He dropped out of school at the age of 14; He later became a doctor's apprentice and this enabled him to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While still a student, Smiles became committed to the cause of parliamentary reform and wrote a series of articles for the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle and The Radical Leeds Times.

In 1838 Smiles was invited to become editor of the Leeds Times, a post he held until 1845 and which he used to promote parliamentary reform, women's suffrage and free trade. In May 1840, he became secretary of the Leeds Parliamentary Reform Association, an organization that promoted the six goals of the radical popular movement known as Chartism: universal suffrage for all men over the age of 21; electoral districts of equal size; secret ballot voting; elimination of requirements to qualify for Parliament, except for winning an election; annual salary for deputies that would enable workers to exercise politics; and annual parliamentary elections.

After leaving the Leeds Times in 1845, Samuel Smiles became secretary of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway, a move that seemed to mark a growing interest in civil engineering, and in the civil engineers who were doing so much to reshape Britain at the time. . In 1854 he became secretary of the South Eastern Railway. In 1866 he became president of the National Provident Institution, but left in 1871 after a serious stroke. He died in 1904.

Sometime in the 1850s, Samuel Smiles seems to have begun to write prolifically. His first book was The Life of George Stephenson, published in 1857. This was the first of some 20 biographical works he published, concluding with his autobiography, published in 1905. Many of his subjects were inventors and engineers, and often Scottish: people like Thomas Telford, James Nasmyth and John Rennie. Smiles clearly admired these personalities, and has been the subject of some controversy because he obviously set out to ensure that his readers would end up admiring them as well.

In parallel, he published a series of other works, of which the first is the best known. self help; with the Illustrations of Character and Conduct he can be said to have paved the way for the "New Thought movement" in Britain and the United States: and by some accounts for the self-help industry, which has become so prolific since then.