W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

An American educator and textbook writer, W. F. Webster was born in Clearwater, Minnesota, in 1862 and died in Minneapolis in 1936. Contemporary references to his work identify him as William Franklin Webster.

Webster is best remembered for school texts on writing and language, including English: Composition and Literature, Elementary Composition, and works in the Webster-Cooley course in English written with Alice Woodworth Cooley. A period review of English: Composition and Literature identified him as principal of East High School in Minneapolis, which helps place his career firmly in public education.

His books aimed to teach students how to write clearly, read attentively, and build a solid grounding in English. Because many of his works were digitized by libraries and projects such as Project Gutenberg and the Online Books Page, they are still easy to discover today.