William Ridley Wills

William Ridley Wills (March 4, 1897 – September 8, 1957) was an American novelist, poet, and journalist. Born in Brownsville, Tennessee, he was a graduate of Vanderbilt University and a member of the "Fugitives" a literary movement of the 1920s.^[1] He worked for the Memphis Press, The Commercial Appeal, and the Nashville Banner newspapers before leaving for New York to become the Sunday Editor for the New York World.^[2] He served as a 2nd Lieutenant with the U.S. Army, 76th Field Artillery during World War I and saw action during at Somme, St. Michel, and Meuse-Argonne, France. He was honorably discharged in France on July 12, 1919.

Wills wrote two novels; Hoax (1922), the life of a young man from the age of eighteen to twenty-seven, and Harvey Landrum (1924), a psychological study of chinless Harvey Landrum, who tries to conceal a sense of inferiority behind a false front of bravery, are written in a frank but restrained prose style.^[3] He and Allen Tate co-wrote a book of poetry called "The Golden Mean; and other poems" which was published in 1923.^[4]