William Hardy Wilson, architect, was the second of four surviving sons of William Joshua Wilson, agent, and his wife Jessie Elizabeth, née Shepherd, both Australian-born. Living with his parents at Burwood, Wilson attended Newington College (1893-98) and passed the junior public examination. From 1899 to 1904 he was articled to Harry Kent of Kent and Budden, architects, and attended Sydney Technical College at night. He qualified in 1904 and was president of the Architectural Students' Society.
Wilson lived for an extended time in London and travelled widely before settling back in Australia. In 1927 he turned from architecture to writing and drawing, publishing several polemical, philosophical and prophetic works. His most enduring works, according to his entry in The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, are The Cow Pasture Road (1920), which focuses on the Camden district of New South Wales; Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania (1924), a collection of finely executed drawings; and Grecian and Chinese Architecture (1937).
