Manly Palmer Hall (March 18, 1901 – August 29, 1990) was a Canadian-born author and mystic. He is perhaps most famous for his 1928 work The Secret Teachings of All Ages.

Manly P. Hall was born 1901 in Peterborough, Ontario to William S. Hall, a dentist, and Louise Palmer Hall, a chiropractor. In 1923 Hall moved from Canada to Los Angeles, California. In that year he was ordained to the Church of the People and published his first of over 150 works, The Lost Keys Of Freemasonry. Later in 1928, at the age of 27 years, he published An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy: The Secret Teachings of All Ages, which is more commonly referred to as The Secret Teachings of All Ages.

The original edition of The Secret Teachings of All Ages was an elephant folio book whose pages were 13" wide and 19" tall, printed on Japan Alexandra paper, and privately published for Mr. Hall by H. C. Crocker Company, Incorporated, of San Francisco. There were five numbered editions: the first or Subscribers' Edition, 550 copies; second or King Solomon Edition, 550 copies; third or Theosophical Edition, 200 copies; fourth or Rosicrucian Edition, 100 copies; and the Fifth Edition, 800 copies, making in all 2,200 copies. According to the Preface in various editions, the first four editions were sold by private subscription before delivery from the printer. Only the Subscribers' Edition lists the original subscribers (on three pages at the beginning of the book); however, only 546 subscribers are named. This may be due to the fact that copies of the book had to be submitted for copyright purposes. Inspection of the Library of Congress catalog in Washington, D.C., discloses that repository is in possession of "Copy A," and it may be presumed, based on a statement that the book was registered at Stationer's Hall, London, that there is a copy or copies there as well.