Samuel Smiles was a British author and politician who lived from December 23, 1812, to April 16, 1904. While running for office on a Chartist platform, he pushed the idea that new attitudes, not new laws, would lead to more growth. In his most important book, Self-Help (1859), he urged people to be thrifty and said that most poverty was caused by bad habits. He also criticized materialism and a government that didn't do much. It changed the way people in Britain thought about politics for a long time and has been called "the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism." Samuel Smiles of Haddington and Janet Wilson of Dalkeith had a son named Smiles. He was born in Haddington, East Lothian, Scotland. He was one of eleven children who lived. He wasn't a strict Reformed Presbyterian like his family was, but they were. He went to a nearby school and dropped out when he was 14. Dr. Robert Lewins taught him how to be a doctor. Because of this deal, Smiles was able to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1829. He learned more about politics there and became a strong backer of Joseph Hume. His father died in the cholera outbreak of 1832, but Smiles was able to keep studying because his mother paid for it.
