Disillusioned, he turned away from middle-class utopianism, and finally found intellectual refuge and national fame in the isolation of self-help.

[7] The book was translated and published in Dutch, French, Danish, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Turkish, and in several Indian languages.

"[10] The socialist Robert Tressell, in his novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, said Self-Help was a book "suitable for perusal by persons suffering from almost complete obliteration of the mental faculties".

[12] Robert Blatchford, a socialist activist, said it was "one of the most delightful and invigorating books it has been my happy fortune to meet with" and argued it should be taught in schools.

[13]: 68  However Jonathan Rose has argued that most pre-1914 labour leaders who commented on Self-Help praised it and it was not until after the First World War that criticisms of Smiles in worker's memoirs appeared.

[13]: 68–9  The Labour Party MPs William Johnson and Thomas Summerbell admired Smiles' work and the Communist miners leader A. J. Cook "started out with Self-Help".