Born in Wilmington Vermont, Wilson was orphaned at the age of three. He spent his early years with his maternal grandparents in Massachusetts, and his adolesence with an aunt and uncle in Iowa. To finance his education at the University of Minnesota, Wilson pooled his life savings ($200) with an equal amount invested by his roommate Henry S. Morris to open in 1889 Morris & Wilson, a bookstore located in the campus's main building. When Morris graduated in 1891, Wilson bought him out and quickly built up the modest enterprise into the best bookstore in all of Minneapolis.

Wilson was forced to make several exhaustive searches through all of the many and disparate publishers' catalogs every year if he wanted to stock the most current titles. Propelled by what he would later refer to as "bibliographic urge," he decided to publish monthly a catalog of new books that would stay current throughout the year. He achieved this by saving the old typeset and refreshing with the new titles as they were published. His Cumulative Book Index was first published in 1898; it sold for $1 and had 300 subscribers.

One year later he published the 1^st edition of United States Catalog, Books in Print. He then set out to achieve for magazine articles what he had for books with his most recognizable product, Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, which first appeared in 1901.

These early and profoundly successful undertakings forced Wilson to relocate the company in New York. The majority of his subscribers were located on the eastern seaboard; mail delays continuously undermined the timeliness of his publications. He reluctantly sold the modest bookstore that had financed the company's early years and had allowed his emergence into bibliographic publishing. With key members of his staff in tow, he set up shop in White Plains, New York, in 1911.

Wilson based his continuing success upon intense cooperation with the ALA and its member libraries. He attended more than 40 of the ALA's national meetings, and hundreds of regional conventions. Sitting on his board of directors, and at many of the indexing desks of his corporation were trained librarians. Practicing librarians were consulted prior to launching new undertakings; their opinions dictated the structure and content of many of Wilson's publications. He constantly solicited the input of the profession and prompted further allegiance by offering his products on a sliding scale, to ensure availability for his products for even the tiniest of libraries. In addition to numerous specialty indexes (Book Review Digest, Library Literature, Current Biography),Wilson also endowed library scholarships and undertook many cooperative projects with the ALA, most impressive being the first publication of Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and Canada(1928), amongst numerous others.

Wilson filled a niche at the very moment that an explosion in printed material dictated a need for bibliographic control. It is difficult to imagine today's library without his considerable contribution. His ardor, coupled with his knowledge of libraries' needs and his innate recognition for the necessity of cooperation, ensured both his success and that of the American Library system. The "Emperor of Indexing" died in his sleep at the age of eighty-five in New York.