Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Autobiography of Samuel Smiles
Nor is the monument which he has raised to their memory a mere collection of dry-as-dust facts. Leaving the technical details to the text-books, and to the records of scientific societies, he has introduced his heroes to a wider public, and made them live again in his pages. His was a new departure in biography. He saw that the everyday work of applied science had its romance. He grasped the fact that the million had become readers, and required to be amused as well as instructed. This, from the literary point of view, is his great merit, and entitles him to be enrolled in the honourable company of story-tellers. Apart from the historical value of his biographies, they are told in a manner so vivacious and dramatic that they have proved themselves irresistibly attractive to young and old in all countries of the world. 8oth in regard to the interest of the theme commemorated, and the literary skill with which it is presented, the Life of George Stephenson has made good its right to rank as an English classic. In that volume and in the Lives of the Engineers, the didactic element is less pro nounced than in other of his works, and, for this reason perhaps, they will be for some readers more completely enjoyable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
