As A Man Thinketh was Allen’s second book. Despite its subsequent popularity he was dissatisfied with it. Even though it was his most concise and eloquent work, the book that best embodied his thought, he somehow failed to recognize its value. His wife Lily had to persuade him to publish it.
The financial crisis that resulted forced James to leave school at fifteen. He eventually became a private secretary, a position that would be called administrative assistant today. He worked in this capacity for several British manufacturers until 1902, when he decided to devote all his time to writing.
Unfortunately, Allen’s literary career was short, lasting only nine years, until his death in 1912. During that period he wrote nineteen books, a rich outpouring of ideas that have lived on to inspire later generations.
Soon after finishing his first book, From Poverty To Power, Allen moved to Ilfracombe, on England’s southwest coast. The little resort town with its seafront Victorian hotels and its rolling hills and winding lanes offered him the quiet atmosphere he needed to pursue his philosophical studies.
James Allen strove to live the ideal life described by Russia’s great novelist and mystic Count Leo Tolstoy – the life of voluntary poverty, manual labor and ascetic self-discipline. Like Tolstoy, Allen sought to improve himself, be happy, and master all of the virtues. His search for felicity for man on earth was typically Tolstoyan.
The works of James Allen are eminently practical. He never wrote theories, or for the sake of writing, or to add another to the existing books. According to his wife, Allen wrote when he had a message, and it became a message only when he had lived it in his own life, and knew that it was good. Thus he wrote facts, which he had proven by practice.

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