Self-Help was published in 1859 by Samuel Smiles. It has been called the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism.It sold 20, 000 copies within first year. By the time of Smiles’ death in 1904 it had sold over a quarter of a million. Self-Help ‘elevated Smiles to celebrity status: almost overnight, he became a leading pundit and much-consulted guru’.When an English visitor to the Khedive’s palace in Egypt asked where the mottoes on the palace’s walls originated, he was given the reply: ‘They are principally from Smeelis, you ought to know Smeelis! They are from his Self-Help!’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’.The founder of Toyota Industries, Sakichi Toyoda was significantly influenced by his reading of Self-Help. A copy Self-Help is under a glass display at the museum that exists on Sakichi Toyoda’s birth site.
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