"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".