Napoleon Hill Foundation
| Napoleon Hill | |
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Portrait of Napoleon Hill, 1904
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| Born |
October 26, 1883 Pound, Virginia |
| Died | November 8, 1970 (aged 87) South Carolina |
| Occupation | Author, Journalist, Salesman, Lecturer |
| Citizenship | American |
| Period | 1928–1970 |
| Literary movement | Self-help |
| Notable works |
Think and Grow Rich (1937) The Law of Success (1928) Outwitting the Devil (1938) |
| Spouse |
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| Children | 3 |
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| Signature |  |
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Oliver Napoleon Hill (born October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author. He is well known for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937) which is among the top 10 best selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one's life. Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve "success".
Hill was born in a one-room cabin near the Appalachian town of Pound in Southwest Virginia. His parents were James Monroe Hill and Sarah Sylvania (Blair) and he was grandson of James Madison Hill and Elizabeth (Jones). His grandfather came to the United States from England and settled in southwestern Virginia in 1847.
Hill's mother died when he was nine years old, and his father remarried two years later to Martha. His stepmother had a big influence on him: "Hill's stepmother, the widow of a school principal, civilized the wild-child Napoleon, making him go to school and attend church." At the age of 13, Hill began writing as a "mountain reporter", initially for his father's paper. At the age of 15, he married a local girl who had accused him of fathering her child; the girl recanted the claim, and the marriage was annulled.
At the age of 17, Hill graduated from high school and went to Tazewell, Virginia to attend business school. In 1901, Hill took a job working for the lawyer Rufus A. Ayers, a coal magnate and former Virginia attorney general. The author Richard Lingeman said that Hill received this position after arranging to cover up the death of a black bellhop, whom the previous manager of the mine had accidentally shot while drunk.
Hill left his coal mine management job shortly afterwards, and entered law school before withdrawing for lack of funds. Later in life, Hill would use the title of "Attorney of Law," although Hill's official biography notes that "there is no record of his having actually performed legal services for anyone,"
Hill moved to Mobile, Alabama in 1907 and co-founded the Acree-Hill Lumber Company. In October 1908, the Pensacola Journal reported that the firm faced bankruptcy proceedings and charges of mail fraud. The paper reported that Hill's lumber company had bought lumber from outside Mobile, including other counties in Alabama and even from Florida, before it sold the lumber "at a much lower price and so far as known at this time have made no returns."
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