William Ridley Wills

Who was William Ridley Wills?

William Ridley Wills, born Brownsville, Tennessee on March 4, 1897, was a graduate of Vanderbilt University and a member of the Fugitive literary group. He worked for the Memphis Press, Memphis Evening Appeal, and the Nashville Banner newspapers before leaving for New York to become the Sunday Editor for the New York World. He served as a 2nd Lieutenant with the U.S. Army, 76th Field Artillery during World War I and saw action during at Somme, St. Michel, and Meuse-Argonne, France. He was honorably discharged in France on July 12, 1919.

He was well known as a novelist, poet, and journalist. Wills wrote two novels; Hoax, the life of a young man from the age of eighteen to twenty-seven, and Harvey Landrum, a psychological study of chinless Harvey Landrum, who tries to conceal a sense of inferiority behind a false front of bravery, are written in a frank but restrained prose style. He and Allen Tate co-wrote a bookof poetry called 'The Golden Mean; and other poems' which was published in 1923.

After the returning from France, William Ridley Wills married Louella Wilson and they had 5 children: Andrew, William, David, Tookie, and Thaddeus.