Elizabeth Towne

Elizabeth Towne (1865–1960) was an American New Thought author, editor, and publisher who founded Nautilus in 1898 and built it into the most successful journal of the early New Thought movement, running it until 1953.

From her base in Holyoke, Massachusetts, she edited the magazine, wrote constantly for it, and published her own books and pamphlets alongside the work of other New Thought authors, becoming one of the few women to own and run a major metaphysical publishing house of her era.

She served as president of the International New Thought Alliance in 1924. Her significance is twofold: as a movement-builder who gave New Thought a durable popular platform, and as a teacher of concrete practice. Towne’s own writing emphasized practical method — controlled breathing, concentration, and affirmation as everyday disciplines for health, poise, and prosperity — rendering metaphysics into simple exercises ordinary readers could perform.

Through Nautilus she distributed both her own breath-and-concentration techniques and the wider movement’s teaching to a mass audience, anchoring New Thought’s practical, self-improving register.