Biographies
An Index of Notable Authors
Samuel Smiles
1812-1904Samuel Smiles was a Scottish author and reformer. Smiles was the oldest of eleven children and was born at Haddington. He left school at the age of 14 and was apprenticed to a doctor, leading him to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. While studying and after graduating he campaigned for parliamentary reform, contributing articles to the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle and the Leeds Times. In 1838, he was invited to become editor for the Leeds Times, a position which he agreed to and filled until 1845. In May 1840, Smiles became Secretary to the Leeds Parliamentary Reform Association, an organisation that held to the six objectives of Chartism: universal suffrage for all men over the age of 21; equal-sized electoral districts; voting by secret ballot; an end to the need of MPs to qualify for Parliament, other than by winning an election; pay for MPs; and annual Parliaments. In 1845, Samuel Smiles left the Leeds Times and became secretary to the Leeds and Thirsk Railway and then, nine years later, the South Eastern Railway. In 1866, he left this position to be president of the National Provident Institution, but left in 1871, after suffering a debilitating stroke. He recovered from the stoke, eventually learning to read and write again, and he even wrote books after his recovery. He died in Kensington and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. As editor of the Leeds Times, he advocated radical causes ranging from women\'s suffrage to free trade to parliamentary reform. But by the late 1840s, Smiles became concerned about the advocation of physical force by Chartists Feargus O\'Connor and George Julian Harney, though he seems to have agreed with them that the movement\'s current tactics were not effective, saying that \"mere political reform will not cure the manifold evils which now afflict society.\" In the 1850s he seems to have completely given up on parliamentary reform and other structural changes as a means of social advance. For the rest of his career, he advocated individual self improvement. [edit] Smiles\' writings Smiles is best known today as the writer of books extolling virtues of self help, and biographies lauding the achievements of \'heroic\' engineers. Most of these biographies were contained in the four volume work, Lives of the Engineers, but he also wrote many other biographies. He selected the topics of his biographies as a means of emphasising his thesis of self help. These works have come to exemplify Victorian values for the modern reader. He received some criticism in his own time from socialists because of his emphasis on individual achievement. He was a prolific author of books and articles.
