Working-Class Sage
The power and progress of James Allen
In his first solo album in 1970, John Lennon famously sang: “A working-class hero is something to be.” If you want to example of how to live out that ideal in art and life, discover the career of inspirational writer James Allen (1864–1912).
In a writing career that lasted only a decade, the English essayist, moralist, and mystic revolutionized the field of modern inspirational literature and provided an example of dramatic personal progress in the story of his own advancement from factory orphan to literary lion.
Before Allen’s death from tuberculosis at age 47, he produced the enormously popular meditation As a Man Thinketh and combined themes of social reform, Victorian self-reliance, and New Thought metaphysics like no author before or since.
Allen’s few years of output, ranging from the publication of his first book in 1901 to his death in early 1912, resulted in nearly twenty books, the launch of two magazines, and a countless range of letters, poems, and articles. The British seeker drank deeply from Eastern spirituality (he was among the first Westerners to popularize principles of Buddhism), American motivational and mind-power philosophy, and the rock-ribbed moralism of Victorian England, where he grew up in the shadow of factories and poverty.
