William Arthur

Born in Antrim, Ireland, in 1819, William Arthur became a Wesleyan Methodist minister and is best known for combining missionary work with a long writing career. He spent part of the 1840s in India, where he worked in the Methodist mission in Mysore, and those years shaped much of his later thought and authorship.

After returning to Britain, he became a widely read religious author and speaker. One of his best-known books, A Mission to the Mysore, grew out of his Indian experience, and he later wrote on Christian life, ministry, and revival. He was also active in Methodist public life and eventually served as president of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference.

Arthur died in 1901, but his work remained part of the religious and missionary literature of the Victorian period. He is remembered as a writer who helped bring stories of mission work to British readers while also playing an important role in nineteenth-century Methodism.