Self-help book

A self-help book is one that is written with the intention to instruct its readers on solving personal problems. The books take their name from Self-Help, an 1859 best-seller by Samuel Smiles, but are also known and classified under "self-improvement", a term that is a modernized version of self-help. Self-help books moved from a niche position to being a postmodern cultural phenomenon in the late twentieth century.

Early history

Informal guides to everyday behaviour might be said to have existed almost as long as writing itself. Certainly ancient Egyptian "Codes" of conduct 'have a curiously modern note: "you trail from street to street, smelling of beer...like a broken rudder, good for nothing....you have been found performing acrobatics on a wall!"'. Indeed, 'some social observers have suggested that the Bible is really the first and most significant and most helpful of self-help books.