William Henry Wills (journalist)

[1][2][3][4] Born in Plymouth in 1810, his father, at one time a wealthy ship-owner and prize-agent, met with misfortunes, and the family moved to London in 1819.

On the death of his father the responsibility of supporting his mother and brother and sister fell on William Henry, or Harry Wills as he was always called.

He contributed to the first number (17 July 1841) the satiric verse on Lord Cardigan called To the Blackballed of the United Service Club.

He was for some time the regular drama critic, in which capacity he ridiculed Louis Antoine Jullien, the introducer of the promenade concerts at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and severely criticised the acting of Charles Kean.

[2][6] In 1850 Wills edited Sir Roger de Coverley by the Spectator, illustrated with engravings from designs by Frederick Taylor (Boston, Massachusetts, 1851; reissued in the Traveller's Library, 1856).

At the end of 1851 Wills accompanied Dickens on his theatrical tour in connection with the Guild of Literature and Art, a philanthropic organisation founded by Dickens, Augustus Egg and Edward Bulwer Lytton, intended to provide welfare payments to struggling artists and writers who had fallen on hard times.

[1] In 1868, while Dickens was still in America, Wills suffered a concussion from an accident while hunting when he was thrown from his horse, and was disabled from his duties as editor of All the Year Round.

[1] She had an extensive knowledge of Scottish literature, and a large fund of anecdotes, and was for many years the centre of a wide literary and social circle.

At her death the sum of £1,000 accrued to the newspaper press fund, in which Wills had interested himself after the failure of the Guild of Literature and Art.

This article is based in part on Wills' entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, a work published in 1900 and now in the public domain