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. 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. 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. He and Allen Tate co-wrote a book of poetry called "The Golden Mean; and other poems" which was published in 1923.