FAMOUS BOOK RECALLED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

FAMOUS BOOK RECALLED

THE LAST DIRECT LINK By the death recently at Newcastle-on-Tyne of Mrs. Lillian Dryden within a week of her 80th birthday, the last direct link with one of the most popular of Victorian writers has been severed. . . Mrs. Dryden was the last surviving child of Samuel Smiles, author of " Self Help," who died in 1904. " Self Help " was an enormous success. Between 1850, its date of publication, and 1912, some 350,000 copies had been sold. It was translated into nearly all the languages in the world, including some of the Indian native tongues. Yet, as has happened more than once in the case of such works, it was rejected by the first publishers to whom it ,was offered. . . Mrs. Dryden married in romantic circumstances. In her early twenties she met Frederick Elliott Dryden, then a mate in the Merchant Service. Her father was against the marriage, but the young couple took matters into their own hands and eloped. It was some time before Dr. Smiles forgave After only a comparatively short period of married life Mrs. Dryden s husband, who had obtained his captain's certificate, was lost at sea when the vessel he was commanding disappeared during a gale. With the help of her father, Mrs. Dryden brought up her four children. Three of them were with her during her last illness, but one daughter is in Persia.