Wallace D. Wattles: The Author Behind The Science of Getting Rich

Wallace D. Wattles (1860–1911) occupies an unusual place in the history of American self-help literature. He was not a celebrity of his own time, and relatively little is known about his personal life. Yet one small book published in 1910—The Science of Getting Rich—would eventually become one of the enduring texts of the New Thought and prosperity-literature tradition. (Wallace D Wattles)

Wattles wrote at a time when Americans were increasingly interested in the relationship between thought, spirituality, health, personal character, and material circumstances. His work belongs to the New Thought movement, a broad religious and philosophical tradition that emphasized the power of mind, belief, and constructive thought. (Wikipedia)

A Little-Known Author With an Enduring Book

Wattles' life remains comparatively obscure. Sources identify him as an American writer born in 1860 who died in 1911. His intellectual interests included the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and his thinking was also shaped by the Christian-social reform currents of his era. (Goodreads)

Rather than presenting wealth simply as the accumulation of money, Wattles connected prosperity with a larger philosophy of living. He believed that a person should cultivate a particular way of thinking and then translate that thinking into purposeful action.

That idea became the foundation of his best-known book.

The Science of Getting Rich

Published in 1910 by Elizabeth Towne, The Science of Getting Rich was deliberately written as a practical book rather than an academic philosophical treatise. Its original edition contained seventeen short chapters, including “The Right to Be Rich,” “Gratitude,” “Thinking in a Certain Way,” “Efficient Action,” and “Getting into the Right Business.” (Project Gutenberg)

One of Wattles' central distinctions was between creation and competition. He argued that prosperity should not depend upon taking opportunity away from another person. Instead, he described wealth as something that could be approached through productive work, purposeful thought, gratitude, and action.

The book repeatedly returns to the relationship between thought and action. Wattles did not present thinking as a substitute for work; his philosophy called for acting efficiently and purposefully in one's present circumstances.

The word science in the title reflects Wattles' conviction that prosperity operated according to discoverable principles. It should not, however, be confused with modern empirical science or contemporary evidence-based financial planning. The book is fundamentally a work of New Thought philosophy and spiritualized self-help. (Wikipedia)

The Three “Science” Books

The Science of Getting Rich was part of a small group of works in which Wattles applied his philosophy to different dimensions of human life.

The Science of Being Great

Here Wattles turned his attention from material prosperity toward character, personal development, and human potential.

The Science of Being Well

Published in 1910, this companion volume applied Wattles' philosophy to health and well-being. Modern readers should distinguish its spiritual and mental-health philosophy from contemporary medical science; it is a historical New Thought text rather than a medical guide. (Simon & Schuster)

The Science of Getting Rich

The most famous of the three, this book focused specifically on prosperity, purposeful living, gratitude, and what Wattles called thinking and acting “in a certain way.” (Project Gutenberg)

Together, the three books reveal something important about Wattles: he was not writing solely about money. His larger project was a philosophy of human development in which prosperity, character, and well-being were interconnected.

Beyond The Science of Getting Rich

Wattles wrote more than the book for which he became famous. His bibliography includes New Science of Living and Healing, How to Get What You Want, The Constructive Use of Foods, A New Christ, Jesus: The Man and His Work, Scientific Marriage, and other pamphlets and writings. He also wrote Hellfire Harrison, a novel. (Wallace D Wattles)

Some of these works are considerably less familiar today. His literary legacy therefore extends beyond the prosperity classic that made his name survive into the modern self-help era.

His Place in the History of Self-Help

Wattles belongs to a remarkable generation of writers who helped establish the foundations of modern success literature. His name can be considered alongside writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Allen, Orison Swett Marden, and later Napoleon Hill within the much broader history of inspirational and self-development writing.

His influence became particularly visible many decades after his death. Modern publishers continue to describe The Science of Getting Rich as an influential prosperity text, and it has been repeatedly republished in new editions. (Penguin Random House)

The book has also been associated with the modern popularity of manifestation and prosperity literature, including The Secret. That later connection belongs to the history of the book's reception rather than to Wattles' original historical context. (Simon & Schuster Canada)

Why Wattles Still Gets Read

There is something striking about Wattles' literary legacy. He died in 1911, only a year after the publication of his most famous book, and yet his work continues to circulate more than a century later.

Part of the appeal lies in the directness of his writing. He takes enormous philosophical questions—What is a good life? What does prosperity mean? How should a person think? What is the relationship between thought and action?—and reduces them to short chapters and practical principles.

Whether or not a modern reader accepts Wattles' metaphysical claims, his books remain valuable as historical documents of an era fascinated by mind, spirituality, self-mastery, prosperity, and the possibility of deliberately shaping one's life.

A Small Body of Work With a Long Afterlife

Wallace D. Wattles did not leave behind the enormous bibliography of some nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors. What he left instead was a concentrated body of writing, dominated by one extraordinarily persistent book.

The Science of Getting Rich has survived because generations of readers have continued to ask the questions Wattles placed at its center: How should we think? How should we work? What does prosperity mean? And what kind of person should we become while pursuing it?

For URIBHO's Books collection, Wattles makes an interesting companion to James Allen and Napoleon Hill: three authors separated by different lives and circumstances, yet connected through the enduring literature of thought, character, ambition, and self-mastery.