Wallace D. Wattles

Wallace Delois Wattles was born in 1860 and died in 1911.

He was an American author from Illinois, and became part of the "New Thought" movement -the base of all self-help writings-, which included extraordinary names like James Allen, Prentice Mullford, and his contemporaries Orison Swett Marden, William Walker Atkison, and the editor of his works and writer herself, Elizabeth Towne.

His best best known work is a book called The Science of Getting Rich (or Financial Success through Through Creative Thought", based completely on the principles of New Thought, and as the author acknowledge in the preface, had influence from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Hegel.

That book inspired the world hit "The Secret", according to her author, Rhonda Byrne, in an interview with Newsweek.

He also wrote two companion books to that one: The Science of Being Great; and The Science of Being Well, which complete the spine of his philosophy.

His other works, previous to "The Science Trilogy", which have being made available in several versions, are:

The Constructive Use of Foods (pamphlet)
"Perpetual Youth" (1909, in The Cavalier), an early science fiction story.
Letters to a Woman's Husband (pamphlet); Scientific Marriage (pamphlet)

Hellfire Harrison (his only novel)


A New Christ (1903) (A beautiful book on the social basis of the doctrine and works of Jesus, based on "Jesus: The Man and His Work", an speech he made in 1902)

How to Get What you Want (1910), a shorter version with the principles of "The Science" trilogy.

Making of the Man Who Can, republished later as How to Promote Yourself (1907, 1914)

New Science of Living and Healing, republished as Health Through New Thought and Fasting (1909)

What Is Truth? (serialized in The Nautilus Magazine, Elizabeth Towne, 1909)