Smiles, SAMUEL, author of Self-Help, was born at Haddington in 1812. His family owed much to the intelligence, shrewdness, and force of character of their mother, who, when left a widow with a family of eleven, continued successfully to conduct a small business. Samuel Smiles had artistic leanings, but studied medicine in Edinburgh, took his degree when he was twenty, and published at his own expense a work on Physical Education (1838). At first he practised in Haddington as a medical man with small success, lectured on chemistry, and wrote articles for an Edinburgh newspaper. He settled as a surgeon in Leeds, but abandoned this for the editorial chair of the Leeds Times. He became secretary of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway Company in 1845, and in 1854 secretary of the South-Eastern Railway, retiring in 1866. While at Leeds he came into contact with George Stephenson, and conceived the idea of writing his life, a work which he eventually accomplished (1857). Self-Help followed in 1859, and was soon an assured success, 20,000 copies being sold during the first year, and up till 1889 the sales had reached 150,000 copies, while the book had been translated into seventeen languages. Some young men in Leeds who met in the evening for self-education had asked Smiles 'to talk to them a bit; though really written before, it was only after the success of Stephenson's life that Self-Help appeared. Henceforward his career was that of a popular author and compiler, varied by travel to the scenes of the labours of the characters he described. An attack of paralysis while he was engaged upon Thrift in 1871 yielded to complete rest and a change of employment. He received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh University in 1878.
To the Self-Help series of books he added Character (1871), Thrift (1875), Duty (1880), and Life and Labour (1887). Works which teach the same truths by example are Lives of the Engineers (1861); Industrial Biography (1863); Lives of Boulton and Watt (1865); Thomas Edward (1876); George Moore (1878); Robert Dick (1878); James Nasmyth (1883); Men of Invention and Industry (1884). Besides contributions to the Quarterly Review, he also published The Huguenots in England (1867), and The Huguenots in France (1873); A Publisher and His Friends; John Murray (1891); and Jasmin, the Barber-poet (1891). The main value of these books is their homely practical nature, and the enforcement of everyday precepts by example.