Why I Wrote A Self-Help Book That Critiques Self-Help Books

Rightly or wrongly self-help is a maligned genre. Forms of self-help literature have been around for millennia but the genre itself appears to have originated in 1859 when Scotsman Samuel Smiles published a book called ‘Self-Help’ which was designed to empower the working classes. The Victorian era of the time was experiencing significant social, cultural and economic changes and in his book Smiles argued that in many cases poverty was due to vices such as laziness and that prosperity was attainable by anybody. The book became a best seller.