Samuel Graham Wilson

Born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1858, he became a Presbyterian missionary and served for many years in Tabriz, Persia. Sources available here describe him as part of the long Presbyterian mission effort in the region, and contemporary library records preserve both his portrait and the record of his work.

Wilson wrote across several genres, from descriptive and historical nonfiction to religious controversy and fiction. Confirmed titles include Persian Life and Customs (1895), Persia: Western Mission (1896), Mariam: A Romance of Persia (1906), Bahaism and Its Claims (1915), and Modern Movements Among Moslems (1916).

He died in 1916, and his books remain useful today as windows into how an American missionary-author interpreted Persian culture and religious life in his own era. Readers coming to him now may find both a vivid eyewitness voice and a revealing snapshot of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestant writing about the Middle East.