Elizabeth Towne (1865 - 1960) was an influential writer, editor, and publisher in the New Thought and self-help movements.

Both Elizabeth Towne and her second husband William E. Towne were for many years associated with the International New Thought Alliance (INTA), and served on its board in various capacities. She served as the president of INTA in 1924.

Towne was the founder and publisher of Nautilus Magazine, a journal of the New Thought Movement that ran from 1898 through 1953, when she brought it to a close due to her advancing age (she was 88 years old at the time). She also operated the Elizabeth Towne Company, which published an extensive list of New Thought, metaphysical, self-help, and self-improvement books by herself and writers such as William Walker Atkinson, Kate Atkinson Boehme, Paul Ellsworth, Orison Swett Marden, Edwin Markham, Clara Chamberlain McLean, Helen Rhodes-Wallace, William Towne, and Wallace Wattles.

The title page of Towne's book The Life Power and How to Use it is shown in the opening sequence of the 2006 movie The Secret, and the film presents many of the ideas that she promoted, along with those of Wallace Wattles and William Walker Atkinson.

Wallace Delois Wattles (1860–1911) was an American author. A New Thought writer, he remains personally somewhat obscure, but his writing has been widely quoted and remains in print in the New Thought and self-help movements.

Wattles' best known work is a 1910 book called The Science of Getting Rich in which he explained how to become wealthy.

Wattles' daughter, Florence A. Wattles, described her father's life in a "Letter" that was published shortly after his death in the New Thought magazine Nautilus, edited by Elizabeth Towne. The Nautilus had previously carried articles by Wattles in almost every issue, and Towne was also Wattles's book publisher. Florence Wattles wrote that her father was born in the United States in 1860, received little formal education, and found himself excluded from the world of commerce and wealth.

According to the 1880 US Federal Census Wallace was living with his parents on a farm in Nunda Township of McHenry County, Illinois and working as a farm laborer. His father is listed as a gardener with his mother 'keeping house'. Wallace is listed as being born in Illinois while his parents are listed as born in New York. No other siblings are recorded as living with the family. According to the 1910 census Wattles had changed the spelling of his last name from Walters to Wattles, He was married to Abbie Walters 47 at the time, they had 3 children Florence Walters; 22, Russell H Walters; 27, and Agnes Walters; 16. It also shows that at the time Wallace's mother was living with the family Mary A Walters at the age of 79.