Who Was James Allen? And Why He Matters
We are the result of what we think.
James Allen, born in Leicester, England, in 1864, wrote nineteen books in nine years, the most well-known, his fifty-nine-page masterpiece, As A Man Thinketh.
In a publication after his death in 1912, his wife Lily described her husband's literary mission saying,
“He never wrote theories, or for the sake of writing; but he wrote when he had a message, and it became a message only when he had lived it out in his own life, and knew that it was good. Thus he wrote facts, which he had proven by practice.”
Allen is often credited as an influence on Norman Vincent Peale's, The Power of Positive Thinking, Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, and many other self-help books and writers.
He was dealt a heavy blow at a young age. His father was robbed and murdered in New York City, two days after arriving, aiming to build a new life in America for his family after the textile industry in England suffered a severe downturn.
That meant the fifteen-year-old James left school and followed in his father's footsteps as a factory knitter to help support his family, which he did until 1902 when he decided to write full-time.
