Williston Fish

Williston Fish (1858-1939) was an American poet, novelist, short story writer.

Life
Fish was a successful attorney who practiced law in Chicago, and wrote on the side. He published two novels, and hundreds of poems and stories.

Writing
His most famous piece of writing is "A Last Will" (a will by a fictitious Charles Lounsberry, bequeathing "the dandelions in the fields and the right to play freely among them" to the children of the world, and so forth), published in ''Harper's Weekly in 1898. The piece has been reprinted at least 100 times since (not always with credit to Fish). "It has been printed as a Christmas keepsake,'' as a children’s book (Pictures in the Fire, 1993), and in fine-press editions by some of the leading book designers of the 20th century. It has appeared in periodicals as diverse as the New York Times, American Forests, the Georgia Bar Journal, and church bulletins. It was included in a 1908 Harvard Ph.D. dissertation, a Canadian school reader, and Irving Wallace’s 1977 bestseller, The Seven Minutes. It has been translated into Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and it inspired a song by Irving Berlin (“When I Leave the World Behind,” 1915). Today it’s on the Internet in blogs, the Ethical Wills Web site, and the online fan club of TV actor Gene Barry, to name only a few."