Wilferd Arlan Peterson was an American author who wrote for This Week magazine (a national Sunday supplement in newspapers) for many years. For twenty-five years, he wrote a monthly column for Science of Mind magazine. He published nine books starting in 1949 with The Art of Getting Along: Inspiration for Triumphant Daily Living."

Biography

Wilferd Peterson was born in Whitehall, Michigan and lived most of his life in Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Grand Rapids is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. The city is located on the Grand River about 40 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 774,160 and a combined statistical area, Grand...

. He was married to Ruth Irene Rector Peterson (1921-79). He credits his wife Ruth as being the inspiration for his work (saying that while he "wrote about the art of living, she lived it"), and they collaborated often on producing these inspirational books.

Career

In Grand Rapids he was the Vice President and Creative Director of an advertising firm. A prolific writer for various industry publications, his inspirational essays began to appear on the "Words To Live By" page of This Week magazine in 1960 (which was distributed in 42 metropolitan Sunday newspapers with over 13 million readers). Letters of praise from admiring readers led to the publication of The Art of Living, the first of a series of books that would sell millions of copies. Essays in this book were also recorded by William J. Nichols, editor of This Week magazine, to produce an album called "The Golden Album of Inspiration."

Peterson was regarded as "one of the best loved American writers of the 20th century, renowned for his inspirational wisdom and aphoristic wit" by the Independent Publishers Group. He was a frequent contributor to This Week magazine, Science of Mind magazine and Readers Digest.

His influences include Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

, Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

 and Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

, among many others. His contemporaries include Norman Vincent Peale

Norman Vincent Peale

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was a minister and author and a progenitor of the theory of "positive thinking".-Early life and education:...

 and Dale Carnegie

Dale Carnegie

Dale Breckenridge Carnegie was an American writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills...

, and current writers and philosophers such as Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield

Jack Canfield is an American motivational speaker and author. He is best known as the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, which currently has nearly 200 titles and 112 million copies in print in over 40 languages...

 and Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy

Brian Tracy is a self-help author and motivational speaker. He serves as Chairman of Brian Tracy International, a human resource company based in Solana Beach, California, with affiliates throughout the United States and thirty-one other countries.-Early life:After dropping out of school before...

have referred to Peterson's works.

His inspirational essays were made into greeting cards, calendars and gift books, which appeared in Hallmark stores from 1970 through 1980. His essays have appeared in Dear Abby's column (http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20000430), used within Blue Mountain Arts (http://www.sps.com) gift books and Chicken Soup for the Traveler's Soul (http://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Soup-Travelers-Soul-Inspiration/dp/1558749705), and specific quotes from his works appear in Quotable Cards.

He is best known for his poem The Art of Marriage (often used as a reading at wedding ceremonies) about marriage, commitment and love which was published in book form by Souvenir Press in April 2006.

The Art of Marriage essay

His most well known writing, The Art of Marriage, has been called by Souvenir Press the "most frequently recited English-language wedding poems and one of the greatest odes to matrimony. It embodies the sentiments, the ideals, and the love to which any marriage aspires. The memorable simplicity of its language makes the poem a touchstone for all couples, both at the start of a relationship and after the blessings of a lifetime in love."

This essay has stood the test of time, circulating with recommendations from couple to couple for almost half a century (and currently on Internet message boards and discussion groups), and is widely used in ceremony readings and printed in wedding programs. Wilferd Peterson's daughter, Lilian Thorpe, has said "this essay has been known to save marriages!" and his granddaughter, Judith Shepherd, has given a framed version of this essay as a gift to many friends over the years. According to Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, a wedding officiant in New York City and editor of the wedding blog Wedlok.com (http://www.wedlok.com), the essay was read at Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's Las Vegas wedding ceremony in 1958, and their marriage is one of the longest lasting Hollywood marriages on record.

Published works

• The Art of Getting Along (1949)
• The Art of Living (1961)
• The New Book of the Art of Living (1962, 1963)
• More about the Art of Living (1966)
• Adventures in the Art of Living (1968)
• The Art of Living in the World Today (1969)
• The Art of Living Day by Day (1972)
• The Art of Living Treasure Chest (1977)
• The Art of Creative Thinking (1991)
• The Art of Living: Thoughts on Meeting the Challenge of Life (1993)