William Aldis Wright was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 writer and editor.

William Aldis Wright was son of George Wright, a Baptist minister in Beccles

Beccles

Beccles is a market town and civil parish in the Waveney District of the English county of Suffolk. The town is shown on the milestone as from London via the A145 Blythburgh and A12 road, northeast of London as the crow flies, southeast of Norwich, and north northeast of the county town of...

. He was educated at Beccles Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, where he graduated BA in 1858. As a nonconformist, Wright was ineligible for election to a Trinity fellowship until 1878, but became Librarian and Senior Bursar of Trinity before that date. Duly elected Fellow in 1878, he became vice-master of the college in 1888. He was one of the editors of the Journal of Philology from its foundation in 1868, and was secretary to the Old Testament

Old Testament

The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...

 revision company from 1870 to 1885. He edited the plays of Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 published in the "Clarendon Press" series (1868–97), also with W. G. Clark

William George Clark

William George Clark , English classical and Shakespearean scholar, was born at Barford Hall, Darlington.He was educated at Sedbergh School and Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected fellow after a brilliant university career. In 1857 he was appointed Public Orator...

 the "Cambridge" Shakespeare (1863–1866; 2nd ed. 1891-1893) and the "Globe" edition (1864). He published a facsimile of the Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 manuscript in the Trinity College library (1899), and edited Milton's poems with critical notes (1903).

He was the intimate friend and literary executor

Literary executor

A literary executor is a person with decision-making power in respect of a literary estate. According to Wills, Administration and Taxation: a practical guide "A will may appoint different executors to deal with different parts of the estate...

 of Edward FitzGerald

Edward FitzGerald (poet)

Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen...

, whose Letters and Literary Remains he edited in 1889. This was followed by the Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble

Fanny Kemble

Frances Anne Kemble , was a famous British actress and author in the early and mid nineteenth century.-Youth and acting career:...

(1895), his Miscellanies (1900), More Letters of Edward FitzGerald (1901), and The Works of Edward FitzGerald (7 vols., 1903). He edited the metrical chronicle of Robert of Gloucester

Robert of Gloucester (historian)

Robert of Gloucester wrote a chronicle of British, English, and Norman history sometime in the mid- or late-thirteenth century. The Chronicle survives in some 16 manuscripts, ranging in date from the early fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, and was of considerable interest to contemporaries...

 (1887), Generydes (1878) for the Early English Text Society

Early English Text Society

The Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...

, Catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum (1-3 vol., 1870–1872), and other texts.

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