{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} '''William Harrison Riley''' (c.1835–1907) was an early British socialist.
Riley was born in Manchester, his father being the manager of a cloth printing factory and Methodist preacher.<ref name="sketches">Edward Carpenter, ''Sketches from Life in Town and Country and Some Verses'', pp.205-209</ref> He trained as an engraver before moving to the United States for three years, then returned to England to work as a commercial traveller.<ref name="utopia">R. C. S. Trahair, ''Utopias and Utopians'', p.339</ref>
In the late 1860s, Riley returned to the U.S., where he became an active socialist and gained experience as a journalist. In 1870, he returned to England once more,<ref name="utopia" /> and got in touch with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.<ref name="sketches" /> He settled in London, where he published ''Yankee Letters to British Workmen'' in 1871,<ref name="utopia" /> and became active in the First International, editing its British journal, the ''International Herald'', from 1872.<ref name="carpenter">Chūshichi Tsuzuki, ''Edward Carpenter 1844-1929'', p.40</ref> By 1875, he had moved to Bristol,<ref name="utopia" /> then in 1876 he moved to Sheffield on the invitation of John Ruskin to manage St George's Farm at Totley on a communitarian basis.<ref name="carpenter" /> In Sheffield, he launched a monthly journal, ''The Socialist'', which ran for only six months.<ref>Martin Crick, ''The History of the Social-Democratic Federation'', p.19</ref>
The farm project was not a success; the workers, former shoemakers, fell into dispute with each other and with Riley, and the land was not as productive as had been hoped.<ref>[http://www.dta.org.uk/ourlongandlivelytraditionUNPUBLISHED/historycontentsummary/johnruskin.htm John Ruskin: the Guild of St George], Development Trusts Association</ref> With the failure of the project, Ruskin permitted Riley to remain at the farm, but in 1880 Riley moved back to the U.S., where he based himself in Massachusetts, writing socialist articles and farming.<ref name="sketches" /> In 1884, Edward Carpenter stayed with Riley while he was visiting Walt Whitman.<ref>David Goodway, ''Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow'', p.44</ref> In 1889, he moved to Lunenburg, Massachusetts, where he lived until 1896.<ref>''The Yale University Library Gazette'', v. 34-36, p.90</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Riley, William Harrison}} Category:1830s births Category:1907 deaths Category:English male journalists Category:English socialists Category:Members of the International Workingmen's Association