He had a radio show, wrote a daily syndicated newspaper column, lectured frequently, and published numerous books and articles.

and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale in 1887, writing an honors thesis on the Idealism of George Berkeley.

[2] Phelps's wife, Annabel,[3] inherited her family's estate and William christened it "The House of the Seven Gables,” after the Nathanial Hawthorne story.

Phelps converted the space in front of the house from a trotting track into a private 18-hole golf course in 1899.

[6] During the summer of 1922, the pastor of the Huron City Methodist Episcopal Church asked him to preach regularly for the season.

[6] Some first-hand accounts describe overflow crowds sitting outside the packed church so they could listen through the windows.

[6] After his retirement from Yale, he continued to present public lectures, radio talks, and write a daily newspaper column about books and authors.

He continued to give a series of Sunday sermons each summer and offer a 20-week lecture course in literature during the winter.

He presented several college commencement addresses each year and served as a judge of the Pulitzer Prize for literature and on book club selection committees.

[10] During his time as a Yale professor, Phelps invited a number of the Senior Class's notable students together in 1884 and founded The Pundits.

In 1951, a museum was opened in the home to house Phelps’s library and to focus on the history of Huron City.

"[12] The professor asked his students to discuss the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins's "sprung rhythm" technique.