WILSON, William

(? -?)

   UK writer, one of several contemporaries with the same name, who devoted 2 chapters of his book of criticism, A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject (1851), to "The Poetry of Science", defining there aspecies of literature called "Science-Fiction" (the first use of the term) as writing "in which the revealed truths of science may be given, interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be poetical and true - thus circulating a knowledge of the Poetry of Science, clothed in a garb of the Poetry of Life". His (unconvincing) example is The Poor Artist by R.H. HORNE (c 1844; 1871). BS [m2]   See also: DEFINITIONS OF SF.