self-culture

noun

self-cul·​ture ˌself-ˈkəl-chər 

: the development of one's mind or capacities through one's own efforts : self-cultivation

[Margaret] Fuller … believed that her purpose as literary editor of The New York Herald Tribune in the early 1840s was to promote reading as a form of self-culture and self-knowledge.

—Sarah Fay

Word History

First Known Use

1747, in the meaning defined above