Selling 20,000 copies in the first year after its publication in 1859, Samuel Smiles' Self-Help made its author an overnight celebrity and much sought-after guru for many. It had sold over a quarter of a million copies by Smiles' death in 1904. The social campaigner Robert Blatchford said of Self-Help that it was "one of the most delightful and invigorating books it has been my happy fortune to meet with."
