Many believe Neville Goddard’s publishing career began in 1941 with the hefty, 171-page book called Your Faith Is Your Fortune, issued under his own imprint at the Hotel Hargrave.

Others believe (Cool Wisdom Books included)… 50 pages is a book and enough to say his first book was At Your Command in 1939 .

But if we leave behind the semantics of what is considered a “book” Neville’s “publishing history” is overturned by a newly discovered paper trail of historical records.

Neville’s publishing legacy didn’t start with his massive self-published triumph. It started with a 5-to-21-page paperbound pamphlet titled “Ask of Me,” priced at a 50 cents (approx. $11.50 in today’s dollars).

The New York Times Book Review (August 13, 1939) are the only public traces that survive.

“Ask of Me, by Neville. D 5-21p pa 50c ’39 Snellgrove”  At Your Command as “O 5-50p $2.00 ’39 Snellgrove.” The New York Times “Latest Books Received” column for August 13, 1939, carried both titles side-by-side.

Publisher Who Got Out of Bankruptcy

Jane A. Snellgrove was an “advertising idea-ist”. Her offices were operating out of the prestigious 4 West 40th Street in Manhattan near the New York Public Library.

Jane went spectacularly broke on May 3, 1932. Newspapers in Scranton, Pennsylvania reported that she had filed for bankruptcy in federal court.

This was the rock-bottom of the Great Depression. Suddenly everyone’s realizing that money was a “collective hallucination” anyway. To get an idea of the circles Jane operated in, you have to look at who she owed this money to. One creditor was Mrs. Julia Gill Robinson Koch, who lost over $8,300 (roughly $180,000 today). Mrs. Koch was a former Red Cross social worker married to a Reverend in what appears as a high-society New York wedding.

The physical laws of 1930s economics totally show that Jane was finished. Except, she wasn’t.

A lot like Abdullah slamming the door in Neville’s face, to bring home that ultimate magical rule…”ignore appearances”…Jane A. Snellgrove appears to have refused to remain destitute.

Copyright records, just three years after her total financial annihilation in 1935, show she was back at that 4 West 40th Street address publishing books.

The 1930s New York intellectual scene was interesting. (In fact, just months after Jane’s bankruptcy, one of her future authors, the artist Isidora Newman, made headlines for setting up dictograph wire-traps in her Hotel St. Moritz apartment to catch extortionists!).

She helped kindergarten teacher June Norton, publish The June Norton Sing-It-Again Book.

By 1938, she packaged a book for elite lecturers, like Clarissa W. Collins, a wealthy New Jersey socialite who gave public “travel talks.” Jane printed Collins’s Mexican Vignettes and successfully secured reviews in London’s Poetry Review.

By 1939, she officially consolidated her efforts under the banner of Snellgrove Publications and pivoted decisively into New Thought.

“Ask of Me” & The Isaiah Connection

The Times column carried Ask of Me side-by-side with At Your Command ($2.00). No copy has surfaced in any library or collector’s catalog in 87 years.

But the discovery of Ask of Me though, shows an obvious ontological secret about Neville’s 1939 debut. The titles of his first two publications appear in Isaiah 45:11.

While the exact phrasing “Ask of me” appears in Psalm 2:8, the core of these Neville’s debut titles appear in the verse of Isaiah 45:11:

“Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.”

Yes. Ask of Me and At Your Command.

The Lanyon Trilogy and the End of the Imprint (1940)

The next year, Snellgrove also released Walter C. Lanyon’s trilogy: I Came, That Ye Might Have, and Life More Abundant. (Lanyon also heavily utilized the phrase “Ask of me” in his texts during this era).

All three appeared on November 1, 1940, priced at $2.50 each. Lanyon himself signed the pink copyright affidavits in Los Angeles, naming Snellgrove Publishing Co. at 4 West 40th Street as the publisher.

After 1940, the imprint appears to disappear.

Neville moved to self-publishing under his own name at 112 West 72nd Street. Lanyon’s subsequent books shifted to Bookhaven Press in California.

So, Neville’s first printed words appeared in 1939 under Snellgrove and somewhere in an attic, estate sale, or library box that lost first “book”, “Ask of Me may still be waiting to be found.

A Final Bit of Esoteric Trivia:  If you search the CoolWisdomBooks archive for the exact phrase “Ask of Me,” you’ll find it only appears in three of Neville Goddard’s hundreds of recorded lectures. But, the phrase shows up repeatedly in the works of Walter Lanyon and in a surprising twist that traces the true lineage of the “I AM” movement, the infamous Joseph Benner.

Reference Section: The “Ask of Me”

Neville Goddard Lectures:

Incubate the Dream (In this lecture, Neville accidentally paraphrases the story of Solomon using his 1939 book title: “Ask of me what you want.”)

Ask What I Shall Give You (Neville’s deep dive into the 1 Kings 3:5 Solomon promise).

God and I Are One (Here, Neville uses the phrase to establish the ultimate boundary of manifestation – the Golden Rule: “If you ask of me that which does not come within the frame of the golden rule, do not ask it of me.”)

Walter C. Lanyon:

2 A.M. (“I have asked you to call upon ME … Ask of ME … Seek ME …Lean upon ME …but not until you have tried everything else have you come to ME.”)

“It Is Wonderful” (“It is marvelous in our eyes. Ask of me and I will show you things that are not written in any book…”)

Trilogy I: “I Came” (1940) (“…ask of ME. Too good to be true…too wonderful, for, as is so tersely stated in the following lines: ‘People have come to fear God…’”)

Trilogy II: “That Ye Might Have” (1940) (“…ask of ME…and as surely as the material father would supply you with good Gifts, I can much more supply you with the Kingdom of Heaven.”)

Joseph Sieber Benner:

The Way Out (1930) (The true “Patient Zero” of the modern I AM movement. Benner writes entirely in the first-person voice of the inner God: “…ask of Me whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. For do you not see, beloved, if you can fully harmonize your life with My Life…”)