"William Wilson" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in The Gift, with a setting inspired by Poe's formative years on the outskirts of London. The tale features a doppelgänger. It also appeared in the 1840 collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and has been adapted several times.
The story follows a man of "a noble descent" named William Wilson. Although denouncing his profligate past, he does not accept full blame for his actions and says that "man was never thus . . . tempted before". The narration then segues into a description of Wilson's boyhood, spent in a school "in a misty-looking village of England".
