William Adolphus Wheeler

William Adolphus Wheeler (November 14, 1833 – October 28, 1874) was an American lexicographer, bibliographer and librarian.

Biography Wheeler was born on November 14, 1833, in Leicester, Massachusetts, the son of Amos Dean Wheeler, a Unitarian minister, and Louisa Warren Wheeler. He grew up in Topsham, Maine, and graduated from Bowdoin College (A.B. 1853; A.M. 1856). In 1856 he married Olive Winsor Frazar of Duxbury; they had six children.

After graduation he taught school a few years, and became Joseph Emerson Worcester's assistant in compiling his quarto dictionary, Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1860.

Wheeler died of typhoid pneumonia on October 28, 1874, in Boston.

Works Besides the publications cited above, he revised and edited Charles Hole's Brief Biographical Dictionary (1866), and the Dickens Dictionary (1873), He left unfinished an index to the principal works of ancient and modern literature, to be entitled Who Wrote It? He edited Familiar Allusions (1882).