This is an accepted version of this page Oliver Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author.

In 1901, Hill accepted a job working for the lawyer Rufus A. Ayers, a coal magnate and former Virginia attorney general.

Author Richard Lingeman wrote that Hill received this job after arranging to keep confidential the death of a black bellhop whom the previous manager of the mine had accidentally shot while drunk.

[7] Hill left his coal mine management job soon afterward and enrolled in law school before withdrawing owing to a lack of funds.

Their marriage was a fraught one due to Hill's alleged abuse of his wife and daughter in addition to his infidelity.

In October 1908, the Pensacola Journal reported that the company was facing bankruptcy proceedings and charges of mail fraud for purchasing lumber from outside Mobile, from other counties in Alabama and Florida, and selling it below cost, thereby failing to generate a return.

[12] His wife Edith filed for divorce in 1908; at the proceedings Hill's friends and business partners testified to his affairs with prostitutes.

The college assembled cars for the Carter Motor Corporation, which declared bankruptcy in early 1912; students were not paid for their labor.

[11] During April 1912, the automobile magazine Motor World accused Hill's college of being a scam and derided its marketing materials as "a joke to anyone of average intelligence".

[13] Following the bankruptcy of the Carter Motor Corporation, Hill pivoted the organization to teaching people how to sell cars rather than make them.

He subsequently moved to Chicago and accepted a job with the La Salle Extension University, before co-founding the Betsy Ross Candy Shop.

[11] In September 1915, he established the George Washington Institute of Advertising, where he intended to teach principles of success and self-confidence.

[17] In 1917, Hill threatened the Illinois Central Railroad with a lawsuit due to low lighting in their cars allegedly making him need glasses.

[19] In 1922, he opened the Intra-Wall Correspondence School, a charitable foundation intended to provide educational materials to prisoners in Ohio.

The foundation was directed by, among others, check forger and former convict Butler Storke, who would be sent back to prison only a year later.

Following the murder of Donald Mellett, he promoted a lecture tour based on their acquaintance, with Hill claiming to have been the target of the same assassins.

[20] The beginning of the Great Depression, however, affected Hill's finances adversely, forcing his Catskills property into foreclosure before the end of 1929.

During the next few years, Hill traveled through the country, returning to his habits from the prior decade of initiating various short-lived business ventures.

He was involved in the production of the first Mormon film Corianton: A Story of Unholy Love, which collapsed after investors accused Hill of malfeasance.

Hill's new wife Rosa Lee Beeland contributed substantially to the authoring and editing of Think and Grow Rich.

Napoleon and Rosa become involved with The Royal Fraternity of the Master Metaphysicians, a cult led by James Bernard Schafer, which regarded Think and Grow Rich as a religious text.

The scam soon collapsed, and he set up a firm called Napoleon Hill Associates to sell courses with W. Clement Stone.

In the introduction, Hill states of the "secret" that Andrew Carnegie "carelessly tossed it into my mind" and that it inspired Manuel L. Quezon of the Philippine Islands to "gain freedom for his people".

[29] Hill claimed insight into racism, slavery, oppression, failure, revolution, war, and poverty, asserting that overcoming these difficulties using his "Philosophy of Achievement" was the responsibility of every human.

"[11] The acknowledgments in his 1928 multi-volume work The Law of Success,[21] listed forty-five of those he had studied, "the majority of these men at close range, in person", like those to whom the book set was dedicated: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Edwin C. Barnes (an associate of Thomas Edison).

[32] Endorsements for The Law of Success were allegedly sent in by William H. Taft, Cyrus H. K. Curtis, Thomas Edison, Luther Burbank, E. M. Statler, Edward W. Bok, and John D.

In Chapter 14 of his book Think and Grow Rich (1937), he openly talks about his "invisible counselors" with whom he discusses various areas of his life.

Following the death of Napoleon in 1970, the foundation and his widow Annie Lou were embroiled in a protracted court battle over the estate, which lasted into the 1980s.

[11] In 1995 the authorized biography of Hill's life, A Lifetime of Riches, was released by Michael J. Ritt Jr. (the executive director of the foundation) and Kirk Landers, which came to a number of controversial conclusions.