Background
William Wilson was born on December 25, 1801, in Crieff, Scotland. He was a son of Thomas Wilson and Agnes (Ross) Wilson.
editor publisher bookseller poet
William Wilson was born on December 25, 1801, in Crieff, Scotland. He was a son of Thomas Wilson and Agnes (Ross) Wilson.
William had no schooling except that from his mother, who sang the Jacobite songs and ballads of her native land.
At the age of seven, Wilson began to work for a farmer and was apprenticed to a cloth dealer in Glasgow. Upright, industrious and mentally eager, he not only rose in business, but educated himself by reading and writing for periodicals and developed his natural aptitude for music by attending concerts and choral groups.
In 1823, William was appointed the editor of the Literary Olio, published in Dundee, a large proportion of which he wrote in both prose and verse. By 1826, the young poet had settled down in Edinburgh, where he became established in business and joined the literary circle of Christopher North. In addition, during his time in Edinburgh, he published poems in the Edinburgh Literary Journal and other leading periodicals.
When, in December 1833, Wilson emigrated to America, he was already known in literary circles in Dundee and Edinburgh. By that time, he had also established a reputation as the author of several poems, signed "Alpin" or "Allan Grant", which had appeared in Scottish magazines, and as a composer of songs.
In the summer of 1834, William moved to Poughkeepsie, where he became a partner of Paraclete Potter, whose bindery and bookstore was already locally famous as a meeting place for leading citizens and writers, and through its circulating library as a center of culture. In 1841, Wilson took over the business, to which he added publishing, and worthily continued the tradition of the place. Several of his poems appeared in the New York Evening Post, the Albion, the Knickerbocker Magazine and the Chicago Record, edited by his youngest son, James Grant Wilson. Selections of Wilson's poems appeared in The Cabinet, Modern Scottish Minstrel and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Poems of Places, but he never issued them in a volume. It was not till 1869, that a portion of Wilson's poems were published in Poughkeepsie with a memoir by Benson J. Lossing. The second edition, with additional poems, appeared in 1875, and the third one was issued in 1884.
It's also worth mentioning, that, in 1836, Wilson became one of the founders of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie, where he was long a vestryman.
Wilson's poetry, though sincere and technically smooth, is without originality. Its language, imagery and meters recall Thomson, Young, Burns, Cowper or Scott. Its themes are the love of simple country life, the nostalgia of a Scottish emigrant, patriotism, freedom, sorrow in bereavement and the varied experiences of the religious life.
William's charming conversation and manners made him a welcome guest in the literary circles of Edinburgh. He was a constant visitor at the house of Mistress Anne Grant of Laggan and she even owned his portrait by Sir John Watson Gordon.
Wilson was married twice. His first wife, Jane M'Kenzie, died in 1826, leaving him with four children. His second wife was Jane Sibbald.