The eldest son of the Reverend George Edwin Wilson (Vicar of St. John's, Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire, and later of Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire) and Cecilia Wrigley, Wilson was educated at Durham School and Trinity College, Oxford.
According to the memoirs of his brother G. H. Wilson, editor of the Cape Times, H. W. Wilson was "chief leader writer" and assistant editor of the Daily Mail from 1898 until his death during 1940.
[2] From 1914 to 1919, Wilson was joint editor with John Alexander Hammerton of the periodical The Great War: The Standard History of the All-Europe Conflict, published by the Amalgamated Press.
The first volume was largely concerned with justifying Britain's entry into the war, and with encouraging the British people to sign up and fight.
[3] Other than his newspaper work, Wilson was also co-author, with William Le Queux, of a novel entitled The Invasion of 1910 (1906), and was the author of numerous books about naval and military history: