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Full Description
One of the most popular Victorian writers, Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) made his name in 1859 with the original self-improvement manual Self-Help. His highly successful multi-volume Lives of the Engineers (also reissued in this series) contained biographies of men who had, like him, achieved greatness not through privilege but through hard work. Left incomplete at his death, edited by the social theorist Thomas Mackay (1849-1912) and first published in 1905, his autobiography opens with a vivid description of the Scottish garrison town of his birth during the Napoleonic wars. In his later years he was a vocal supporter of state education, and the value of education was a constant theme throughout his life. He remembers his schooldays here with clarity, writing that 'a good education is equivalent to a good fortune'. Straightforward and unpretentious, this book will be of interest to historians and readers fascinated by the Victorian drive for self-improvement.
Contents
Preface; 1. Boyhood and education; 2. Youthful recollections; 3. A student of medicine; 4. Reform, the Lauder raid, the cholera; 5. Surgeon in Haddington; 6. A rolling stone gathers no moss; 7. Returns to England: London, Sheffield; 8. Editor of the Leeds Times; 9. Life in Leeds; 10. I leave political life; 11. End of residence in Leeds; 12. Newcastle and the neighbourhood; 13. Secretary of the South-Eastern Railway; 14. A successful author at last!; 15. Railway work: Charing Cross line; 16. Lives of the Engineers, and other works; 17. The Huguenots: travels in France; 18. The North Frisian Islands; 19. Character, illness, a long rest; 20. Thrift, The Scotch Naturalist, George Moore, etc.; 21. Visit to Italy; 22. Growing old; 23. Appreciation from foreigners; 24. Translations, Royat, Italy; Index.
