An evening with a Victorian giant

October 08, 2004
Friday

An evening with a Victorian giant

Johnathan Pearce (London) Events

(0)

Last evening I enjoyed a pleasant evening chatting to old friends at a reception held at the Institute of Economic Affairs in honour of great Victorian author, Samuel Smiles. His most famous work, Self Help, became a best seller, not just in Britain but also around the world.

It is, in fact, probably the great grandaddy of self help books. Go into any bookshop today and you will see shelves crammed with books showing you how to get rich, be healthier, happier, deal with relationships, and so forth. In fact, the spread of liberal ideas will be limited unless people also take the opportunity to liberate their own potential. Reading Smiles is a reminder that there is more, much more to ideas than the pure political realm.

After a long period of neglect, I hope this great book will win back the respect it deserves.

Comments

As Samuel Smiles work is out of copyright it can be freely downloaded thanks to Project Gutenberg ..

http://textual.net/access.gutenberg/Samuel.Smiles

Posted by 1327 at October 8, 2004 11:06 PM

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