ABSTRACT
H o w to Get On in Victorian England was a problem which exercised some able minds in the fifties and sixties, and to which many more would gladly have welcomed a simple answer. The existence of a considerable popular literature of success after 1848 reflects the widespread need for social and personal adjustment in the new industrial society which had emerged from the painful upheavals of the previous twenty years. Something more was required than vague talk of 'the good time coming'; it was necessary to show how and why everyone might have a share in the glories symbolized so strikingly in the Great Exhibition. 'The Social Gospel' of Samuel Smiles was a popular presentation of the benefits and possibilities inherent in the new society.1 Every age has its popular prototypes who epitomize the dominant social values of the time. Smiles and numerous lesser writers of success litera ture provided the social heroes for that ideal 'Victorian Com monwealth ' which, wrote an enthusiastic contemporary, was 'the most wonderful picture on the face of the earth. '2 There was
nothing particularly new in the phenomenon of self-made men; the eighteenth century was full of examples of cobblers and tailors and weavers who had risen from obscurity to positions of wealth and influence. What was new was the deliberate and conscious use which was made of these examples, the elevation of the self-made man into an almost mystical figure, and as a [corollary the detailed analysis of the ingredients of his success.
