Samuel Smiles is best known for his book Self Help (1859), which many have assumed to be an encouragement to social and financial success. However, Smiles actually argued against the single-minded pursuit of success, and in favour of the protean formation of character as the ultimate goal of life. First published in 1987, this book examines Samuel Smiles’ ideals of work and self-help against the background of the Victorian work ethic. Drawing on ‘sub-literature’ such as pamphlets, periodicals, novels, works by Dissenting and Anglican ministers, popular ‘success’ and ‘self-improvement’ books, and general literature on the condition of the working classes, it presents a broad range of public opinion and attitudes towards work and in doing so, creates an essential framework and context for Smiles’ popular books. This book will be of interest to those studying Victorian history and ideology.

Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) is remembered as the popular moralist who wrote Self-Help and the Lives of the Engineers yet his considerable output numbered around thirty books, another thirty pamphlets and hundreds of articles. His work was extremely popular, particularly from the 1860s to the 1890s, and he was, for a time, a considerable celebrity. This new work is the first not only to examine Smiles as a whole but also to identify the unifying theme of his work. He was, according to Jarvis, solving the 'Condition of England Question' and abandoning many of the conventional values of middle-class Victorian Britain he is popularly thought to personify. In their place came an assault on anything he regarded as socially divisive: the remedy lay in cooperation, and the means to that lay in synthesising responses which bridged many of the great controversies of his time. Smiles is still highly relevant for many today, although not always for the right reasons. His work lives on as a formative influence in the way we approach the history of technology but a distorted image of him as an advocate of individual responsibility and a critic of over-government led to his emergence as the darling of the Tory right in the l980s. Jarvis' controversial biography aims to set the record straight, revealing the truth about this hugely influential character and his significance for both Victorian and late twentieth-century society.

Victorian Britain set out to make the ancient world its own. This is the story of how it failed. It is the story of the headmaster who bludgeoned his wife to death, then calmly sat down to his Latin. It is the story of the embittered classical prodigy who turned to gin and opium - and the virtuoso forger who fooled the greatest scholars of the age. It is a history of hope: a general who longed to be an Homeric hero, a bankrupt poet who longed to start a revolution. Victorian classicism was defined by hope - but shaped by uncertainty. Packed with forgotten characters and texts, with the roar of the burlesque-stage and the mud of the battlefield, this book offers a rich insight into nineteenth-century culture and society. It explores just how difficult it is to stake a claim on the past.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume examines the ideals and experiences of work during the long nineteenth century. The meanings attached to work had resonance in multiple aspects of people’s lives, and the sources consider this breadth. The primary sources examine the association of work with respectability, the challenges industrialization posed to men’s traditional labour and identities, and the pressures placed on working women by the increasingly normative domestic ideal. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this volume will be of great interest to students of British History.

Stimulating and informative new essays on many aspects of nineteenth-century culture.