Books by Beth Blum
Beth Blum teaches modern and contemporary literature at Harvard University, where she is an Assistant Professor of English. Her book, The Self-Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature, was recently published with Columbia University Press (2020). Recent work has appeared in PMLA and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Interviews with Beth Blum
The Best Self-Help Novels, recommended by Beth Blum
Since the publication of Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help (1859) in Victorian Britain, self-help has become a billion dollar industry—and its influence is even felt in the contemporary novel, says Harvard literary scholar Beth Blum, author of The Self-Help Compulsion, a new history of the rise of self-help narratives in modern literature.
