Oliver Napoleon Hill was an American self-help author and conman. He is best known for his book Think and Grow Rich, which is among the best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one's life.

Life and Career

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 the grandson of James Madison Hill and Elizabeth (Jones). His grandfather came to the United States from England and settled in southwestern Virginia in 1847. His father was an dentist, at first unofficially and then with a license.

Hill's mother died when he was nine years old, and his father remarried two years later to Martha. His stepmother was a good influence for 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 newspaper. At the age of fifteen, he married a local girl who had accused him of fathering her child; the girl later recanted the claim, and the marriage was annulled.

Early Career

At the age of seventeen, Hill graduated from high school and moved to Tazewell, Virginia, to attend business school. 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.

Hill left his coal mine management job soon afterward and enrolled in law school before withdrawing owing to a 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."

In 1903, Hill married for the second time to Edith Whitman; in 1905 their child Edith Whitman Hill was born. Their marriage was a fraught one due to Hill's alleged physical abuse of his wife and daughter in addition to his frequenting of prostitutes.

Allegations of fraud

In 1907 Napoleon moved to Mobile, Alabama. He founded Acree-Hill Lumber Company with his business partner. The company faced bankruptcy and was also accused of fraud for buying lumber outside of Mobile and selling it below market value.

Two years later, he launched the Automobile College of Washington. Here he worked with students to develop, build and sell cars. This course also received negative coverage in the news: he was accused of scamming and was called a joke on anyone of average intelligence. The school closed its doors that same year.

In 1910, he married Florence Elizabeth Horner, with whom he had three sons. He subsequently moved to the town of his wife’s family, Lumberport in West Virginia.

A little while later he moved again. This time he went to Chicago and accepted a job at la Salle Extension University. In 1915, he founded the George Washington Institute of Advertising, where he began teaching principles of success and self-confidence.

Death

Napoleon Hill died aged 87 on November 8, 1970. He was worth about a million dollars.