F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

An excellent compilation by Folio of Smiles many works

This is an abridged edition of Smiles’ work. Included are James Brindley, John Smeaton, Matthew Boulton and James Watt, John Rennie, Thomas Telford, George and Robert Stephenson. Omitted are some of the more antiquarian pages about engineering history, general backdrop information, and some of the lesser achievements of the “lives”.

Samuel Smiles (23 December 1812 – 16 April 1904) was a British author and government reformer. Although he campaigned on a Chartist platform, he promoted the idea that more progress would come from new attitudes than from new laws. His primary work, Self-Help (1859), promoted thrift and claimed that poverty was caused largely by irresponsible habits, while also attacking materialism and laissez-faire government. It has been called “the bible of mid-Victorian liberalism” and had lasting effects on British political thought.