Life and Labor

Written along the lines of the author's Self-Help and Character, this book shows readers what can be accomplished in life and labor by honest force of will and steady perseverance. "The chapters on Over Brain-work and the Conditions of Health may be of use to those who work with their Brains too much and their Physical System too little. This part of the work has been to a certain extent the result of personal experience." Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) was a zealous advocate of material progress based on individual enterprise and free trade. From 1845 to 1866 he was engaged in railway administration, and in 1857 he published a life of the inventor and founder of the railways, George Stephenson. Best known for his didactic work Self-Help (1859), which, with its successors, Character (1871), Thrift (1875), and Duty (1880), enshrined the basic Victorian values associated with the "gospel of work."