His primary work, Self-Help (1859), promoted thrift and claimed that poverty was caused largely by irresponsible habits, while also attacking materialism and laissez-faire government.

Her example of working ceaselessly to support herself and his nine younger siblings strongly influenced Smiles's future life, but he developed a benign and tolerant outlook that was sometimes at odds with that of his Reformed Presbyterian forebears.

[2] 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.

As editor of the Leeds Times, he advocated radical causes ranging from women's suffrage to free trade and parliamentary reform.

By the late 1840s, however, Smiles became concerned about the advocation of physical force by Chartists Feargus O'Connor and George Julian Harney, although 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".

a week (above the average pay of bankers' clerks) was content to inhabit a miserable one-roomed dwelling in a bad neighbourhood, the one room serving as parlour, kitchen, and sleeping-room for the whole family, which consisted of husband, wife, four sons, two cats, and a dog.

The Globe Permanent Benefit Building Society 493 New Cross Road Deptford SE14 Founded 1868 Incorporated 1878.

[7] He claimed that the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 was "one of the most valuable that has been placed on the statute-book in modern times".

[9]In 1871, he edited the letters written by his son, Samuel Smiles Jr (Born 1852), and sent home during his teenage sea voyage (taken for his health[10]), as well as the log he kept of his journey to Australia and the United States between February 1869 and March 1871, and published them in London in book form, under the title A Boy's Voyage Round the World.

The popular agitator must please whom he addresses, and it is always highly gratifying to our self-love to be told that someone else is to blame for what we suffer.

So it rarely occurs to these orators to suggest that those whom they address are themselves to blame for what they suffer, or that they misuse the means of happiness which are within their reach ...

[12] The origins of his most famous book, Self-Help, lay in a speech he gave in March 1845 in response to a request by a Mutual Improvement Society, published as, The Education of the Working Classes.

In it Smiles said: I would not have any one here think that, because I have mentioned individuals who have raised themselves by self-education from poverty to social eminence, and even wealth, these are the chief marks to be aimed at.

The ignorant man passes through the world dead to all pleasures, save those of the senses ... Every human being has a great mission to perform, noble faculties to cultivate, a vast destiny to accomplish.

[15] Although John Murray was willing to publish Self-Help on a half-profits system, Smiles rejected this as he did not want the book to lose its anecdotes.

In 1859, Smiles self-published the book, retaining the copyright, while he paid John Murray a ten per cent commission.

[16] Self-Help "elevated [Smiles] to celebrity status: almost overnight, he became a leading pundit and much-consulted guru".

[17] Smiles "suddenly became the fashion and he was deluged with requests that he should lay foundation stones, sit for his portrait, present prizes to orphan children, make speeches from platforms.

After the death of Smiles in 1904, the manuscript of Conduct was found in his desk and, on the advice of John Murray, was destroyed.

Sir George Reid was commissioned to paint Smiles's portrait, completed in 1877 and now in the collection of the National Gallery, London.

[20] When, in 1892, William Gladstone returned to power and, as prime minister, introduced his Second Irish Home Rule Bill, Smiles wrote to his son in Ulster: "Don't you rebel.

"[22] On 16 April 1904, Samuel Smiles died in Kensington in his 92nd year, London and was buried in Brompton Cemetery.

Self-Help has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism",[23] and it raised Smiles to celebrity status almost overnight.

A. Roebuck in 1862 called Smiles's Workmen's Earnings, Strikes and Savings "a very remarkable book" and quoted passages from it in a speech.

[24] George Bernard Shaw, in his Fabian Essays in Socialism (1889), called Smiles "that modern Plutarch".

A. Hobson and A. F. Mummery in their Physiology of Industry (1889), claimed that saving resulted in the underemployment of capital and labour during trade depressions.

General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) by John Maynard Keynes, attempted to replace classical liberal economics.

He recalled the appearance of Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles, who 40 or 50 years ago gave lectures at Leeds encouraging young men to engage in self-improvement.

[31] In 1962, the director of the British Institute of Management, John Marsh, said that young men who entered industry needed a sense of service and duty; they must be "men of character who know how to behave well as in phases of success"; they must possess self-discipline in thinking and behaviour: "There is something still to be said for Samuel Smiles's doctrine of self-help".

[32] The liberal economist F. A. Hayek wrote in 1976 that: "It is probably a misfortune that, especially in the USA, popular writers like Samuel Smiles...have defended free enterprise on the ground that it regularly rewards the deserving, and it bodes ill for the future of the market order that this seems to have become the only defence of it which is understood by the general public.