Adrian Wilson was born on 1 July 1923 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and raised in Beverly, Massachusetts.
[2] During World War II, he was interned at Camp Angel in Waldport, Oregon where he printed William Everson's anti-war poems for Untide Press.
After the war, he and his new wife Joyce Lancaster Wilson settled in San Francisco and helped to form the Interplayers Theater.
[3] In 1958, he sold his press and, along with his wife, began a tour of Europe where they met Will Carter, John Dreyfus, Hermann Zapf, Stanley Morison, Beatrice Warde, and Giovanni Mardersteig.
[4] He died of congestive heart failure on 3 February 1988 in a hospital in San Francisco.