Smiles

Smiles, SAMUEL, LL.D., was born in 1812, and educated for the medical profession, which he abandoned for journalism, becoming editor of the Leeds Times. In 1845 he was appointed secretary of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway, passing ten years later to the same post on the South-Eastern, and resigning it in 1866 to devote himself to literature. In 1857 he had brought out his well-known Life of George Stephenson, to be followed by Self-Help (1859), Lives of the Engineers (1861), Industrial Biography (1863), and Lives of Boulton and Watt (1865). The fruits of his later labours have appeared in two volumes on the Huguenots in England and in France, Character, Thrift, Duty, Life and Labour, with other works. In 1878 he received the degree of LL.D. from Edinburgh University.