Robert "Bob" Collier was born April 19, 1885, in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Mary Ferguson and John Collier. His mother died when he and his older brother were quite young, and his father traveled widely for Collier's Magazine, which was founded and published by his uncle, Peter F. Collier. Bob was expected to become a priest, but before taking his vows he decided against the life of a clergyman and headed off to seek his fortune.

Because of an earlier, seemingly undiagnosable illness which he finally cured through Christian Science, he started investigating how the Mind could so quickly and surely cure an illness which doctors had been working on for months. Clearly there must be powers in the Mind he'd never suspected -- and if it had dominion over his physical self, why could it not cure any financial lack? Why could it not bring him anything of good he might wish?

For long months, Bob studied hundreds of books and courses on everything relating to metaphysics and success in life. Whole religions seemed to be built on it. It was a long time before he began to find parts that were really workable in everyday life; a long time before he realized tangible results from his efforts -- but when results began, they came quickly.

For some time Robert Collier had had the idea for a set of books on practical psychology. He put this idea into action, working night and day writing the books. Within six months of publication of these books he received more than one million dollars-worth of orders for them. The books were later combined into a single volume entitled The Secret of the Ages. He sold over 300,000 sets of them -- and received thousands of letters telling of wonderful results obtained from the books. He wrote four more courses, and this excellent material was later combined into one book: Riches Within Your Reach. It has been translated into German, Italian, French, and Spanish, and sold all over the world.