Material Ambitions Av Rebecca (Lecturer Stanford University) Richardson

<p><b>What the Victorian history of self-help reveals about the myth of individualism.</b></p><p>Stories of hardworking characters who lift themselves from rags to riches abound in the Victorian era. From the popularity of such stories, it is clear that the Victorians valorized personal ambition in ways that previous generations had not. In <i>Material Ambitions</i>, Rebecca Richardson explores this phenomenon in light of the under-studied reception history of Samuel Smiles''s 1859 publication, <i>Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance</i>. A compilation of vignettes about captains of industry, artists, and inventors who persevered through failure and worked tirelessly to achieve success in their respective fields, <i>Self-Help</i> links individual ambition to the growth of the nation. </p><p>Contextualizing Smiles''s work in a tradition of Renaissance self-fashioning, eighteenth-century advice books, and inspirational biography, Richardson argues that th