William H. (William Harris) Elson

William H. Elson was an American educator and textbook author who served as superintendent of the Cleveland Public Schools from 1906 to 1912. Before arriving in Cleveland, he held school leadership posts in Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and he studied at Indiana University and the University of Chicago.

In Cleveland, he was known as a reform-minded administrator. He introduced quarterly student promotions, supported early vocational education, and helped establish East Technical High School in 1908, one of the first technical high schools of its kind in the country.

Elson's lasting reputation came from his reading textbooks, especially The Elson Readers. Those books became widely adopted in the United States and abroad, with the series reportedly selling more than 50 million copies and reaching classrooms in dozens of countries. Public-domain editions of his school readers and literature collections are still preserved in major online archives today.