David Harris Willson (May 18, 1901 – December 11, 1973) was an American historian and professor who specialized in the history of 17th-century England.
[4] While at Haverford he was selected for a fellowship at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he pursued a Ph.D. in English History.
Willson's first book was The Parliamentary Diary of Robert Bowyer, 1606-1607, published by University of Minnesota Press in 1931.
[8] His magnum opus, co-authored with Stuart E. Prall, is A History of England, which was first published in 1967 by Holt and has undergone several subsequent editions.
Willson received the Laura Messenger Prize in History (1923), which allowed him to travel to England for research on his doctoral dissertation.
In a September 1994 interview, American historian Stanford Lehmberg stated: Willson met Lillian Kemp Malone at the University of Minnesota, where she was pursuing an MA degree in French.