Atkinson was born in Baltimore in 1862, practised law in Pennsylvania, and by his own later account was broken by the pace of it. He credited his recovery to New Thought, moved to Chicago, edited New Thought magazine and then Advanced Thought, and founded the Yogi Publication Society.
What followed was one of the largest one-man operations in American metaphysical publishing. Under his own name he wrote on the law of attraction, on mental influence and on the subconscious. As Yogi Ramacharaka, presented to readers as a Hindu teacher, he wrote a shelf of books on hatha yoga, on the science of breath and on what he called raja yoga, and for decades these were among the most widely read English accounts of Indian practice, which makes them important whatever one concludes about their accuracy. As Theron Q. Dumont he wrote on concentration, personal magnetism and public speaking, and as Swami Bhakta Vishita and Magus Incognito he wrote on clairvoyance and on Rosicrucianism.
The pen names were not disclosed in his lifetime. Establishing which books are his has taken decades of bibliographical work on publishers' records, copyright registrations and internal evidence of style and argument. The picture is now reasonably settled, though not down to the last title, and a handful of works remain contested at the edges of the list.