George F. Willison

George Findley Willison (1896–1972) was a writer and editor who specialized in American history.^[1] He also worked in education, journalism, art, public relations, and the military.

Willison was born in Denver, Colorado and attended the University of Colorado, earning a Bachelor of Arts and graduating in 1918.^[2] After serving briefly in the US Army during World War I, he won a Rhodes Scholarship and attended Oxford from 1920-1923 with a focus on English history, economics, and political science. He followed this with a year in Paris studying French literature at Sorbonne University.^[3]

He returned to the US and worked for newspapers in Denver and New York City between 1925 and 1927.

He spent much of his adult life in New York, after purchasing a home from fellow author Katherine Anne Porter. Notable among his books is Saints and Strangers, about the lives of the Mayflower Pilgrims.^[4] He also wrote Cliffs Notes for the books Pilgrim's Progress and The Federalist, and contributed to the History of Pittsfield, MA.

Books

• Here They Dug The Gold (1931, rev. 1945)
• Why Wars are Declared (1936)
• Saints and Strangers (1945)
• ''Behold Virginia: the fifth crown. Being the trials, adventures & disasters of the first families of Virginia, the rise of the grandees & the eventual triumph of the common & uncommon sort in the Revolution (1951)
• I Am an American - Patrick Henry and His World (1969)
• The Pilgrim Reader (1953)