Aiden Wilson Tozer was born on April 21, 1897, in Newburg, PA. His family moved to Akron, Ohio, a town filled with churches, when he was just a young boy. At the age of 17, Tozer heard a street preacher and began his lifelong "pursuit of God." With no formal Bible training, Tozer was self-taught and became pastor of Southside Alliance in Chicago in 1928. He was pastor there for thirty years.

Tozer began writing for his church newsletter and went on to write Wingspread, Let My People Go, The Pursuit of God, God's Pursuit of Man (formerly titled The Divine Conquest), The Root of the Righteous, Keys to the Deeper Life, Born after Midnight, Of God and Men, the Knowledge of the Holy, and Christian Book of Mystical Verse. He was also the editor of Alliance Weekly. Many of his articles and sermons have been compiled and published as books.

For Tozer, "there was no substitute for knowing God firsthand." He wrote The Pursuit of God, his classic book about achieving the heart's true goal in God, man's relation to Him and how to maintain that relationship with Him, while traveling on a train to Texas.

Tozer died on May 12, 1963.