William Walker Atkinson was a very important and influential figure in the early days of the New Thought Movement. Little is known about his early years, except that he was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 5, 1862, to William and Emma Atkinson, both of whom were born in Maryland also. He married Margaret Foster Black of Beverley, New Jersey on October 1889 and they had two children. He pursued a business career from 1882 onwards and in 1894 he was admitted as an attorney to the Bars of Pennsylvania. Whilst he gained much material success in his profession as a lawyer, the stress and over-strain eventually took its toll, and during this time he experienced a complete physical and mental breakdown, and financial disaster. He looked for healing and in the late 1880's he found it with New Thought. From mental and physical wreck and financial ruin, he wrought through its principles, perfect health, mental vigor and material prosperity. Some time after his healing, Atkinson began to write some articles on the Truths which he had discovered which was then known as Mental Science, and in 1889 an article by him entitled "A Mental Science Catechism," appeared in Charles Fillmore's new periodical, Modern Thought. By the early 1890's Chicago had become a major centre for New Thought, mainly through the work of Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Atkinson decided to move there and he became an active promoter of the movement as an editor and author. In 1900 he worked as an associate editor of Suggestion, a New Thought journal, and wrote his first book, Thought-Force in Business and Everyday Life, being a series of lessons in personal magnetism, psychic influence, thought-force, concentration, will-power & practical Mental Science.