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Halsey Wilson was born on May 12, 1868, in Wilmington, Vermont, the son of John Thompson Wilson, who had a small stonecutting business, and Althea Dunnell Wilson. Orphaned before he was three years old, he was reared by his maternal grandparents in rural Massachusetts, first at Shelburne Falls and then at Colrain. At the age of twelve he went to live with relatives on a farm near Waterloo Falls, Iowa.
Wilson studied at Beloit Academy in Beloit, Wisconsin (1883 - 1885), and then attended the University of Minnesota intermittently from 1885 until, probably, 1892 without earning a degree.
In December 1889, after holding various part-time jobs, including janitor, newspaper deliverer, job printer, and custom bookseller, he and his roommate, Henry S. Morris, opened Morris and Wilson, a small bookshop for the university community. The business flourished from the start.
Morris left two years later, upon his graduation; Wilson remained and eventually bought him out. During the early 1890's Wilson also worked on weekends at the Minneapolis Public Library.
As a bookseller Wilson was struck by the lack of an accurate, up-to-date, cumulative list of currently published books. The result was a venture into the economically precarious, timeconsuming business of bibliographical publishing. Working at home with his wife, Wilson compiled the Cumulative Book Index, which, first issued in February 1898, grew into the authoritative record of books currently published in English. This work embodied the key features of what came to be known as the Wilson indexes - author, title, and subject entries for each item, arranged in one alphabetical series, and the publication of cumulated issues at specified intervals. The flexibility and currency were achieved in a way then unique in bibliographical publishing: through the production, for each entry, of linotype slugs that could be filed and used at will, in any order.
Soon afterward, Wilson published his first United States Catalog (1899), a list of books in print. His Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, first issued in 1901, became the standard general periodical index and the model for the many indexes he subsequently issued in specialized fields.
In 1903 Wilson organized and incorporated his business as the H. W. Wilson Company, which, in 1905, entered the field of selective bibliography with Book Review Digest and then the Children's Catalog (1909), the first of various lists of books recommended for public and school libraries.
The Readers' Guide having stimulated requests for copies of periodical articles themselves, Wilson inaugurated the Debaters' Handbook series (later the Reference Shelf) in 1907; and three years later he established Periodicals Clearing House to sell back issues of journals. Later the company published specialized bibliographies, yearbooks, bibliographical dictionaries, guidebooks, collections, texts, and handbooks for the library profession, as well as a house organ that evolved into a professional library journal, Wilson Library Bulletin (1914).
Several works by Wilson were The Bookman's Reading and Tools (1925) and Toaster's Handbook: Jokes, Stories, and Quotations (1914), one of a series of three compilations on which he collaborated under the pseudonym of Harold Workman Williams. In marketing the Readers' Guide, Wilson hit upon a pricing device that he applied to others of his ongoing publications and that enabled him to increase the number of subscribers and stabilize his struggling bibliographical business. This was the "service" basis, a sliding scale of fees related to the holdings of subscribing libraries.
By 1911 he was doing well enough to effect a division of fields with his chief competitor in book trade publications, R. R. Bowker; and in 1913 he sold his bookstore and moved the company to White Plains, New York, which was closer to New York City, the center of publishing.
Four years later the company was transferred to the Bronx, where the large plant contained all aspects of publishing from editing to distribution. The company continued to expand, issuing new indexes, reference works, and services in response to new trends and market demands. Its new offerings included the monumental Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and Canada (1927), Educational Film Guide (1936), and, after 1938, printed, simplified catalog cards for small libraries.
By 1948 its assets had reached more than $1. 5 million and its income almost that; although profits were modest, the business never failed to pay a dividend.
In December 1952 Wilson, somewhat infirm, surrendered the presidency to become chairman of the board of directors.
He died on March 1, 1954, in Croton Heights, a section of Yorktown Heights, New York, which he and his wife developed through their Croton Heights Realty Company.
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Unassuming, impassive, indomitable, working without a private secretary at an old rolltop desk in a corner of the editorial offices, Halsey Wilson was called "Pop" or "Papa" behind his back by long-time employees.
On August 15, 1895, Halsey William Wilson married Justina Leavitt, a teacher and school administrator.
Richard Rogers "R. R." Bowker was an American journalist, editor of Publishers Weekly and Harper's Magazine, and founder of the R.R. Bowker Company.
