Wright's work with and for others formed one of his most characteristic activities. To such co-operation are due the splendid oriental series of the Palæographical Society, drawn up under his editorship, and his weighty contributions to the lexical works of Payne Smith in Syriac, of Dozy in Arabic, and of Neubauer in Hebrew. His wide scholarship was also of the greatest value to the Old Testament revision committee, of which he was a member. As a teacher he will be long remembered at Cambridge, both by colleagues and by a succession of distinguished pupils. The University Library is largely indebted to his active mediation for the possession of the finest European collection of early Indian manuscripts, that obtained by his brother, Dr. D. Wright, in Nepal, and since enlarged.
[Personal knowledge; communications from family; obituary notices by R. L. B[ensly] in Academy, in Journal of Royal Asiatic Soc. for 1889, p. 708, and by Professor de Goeje of Leiden; Catalogue of the Cambridge University Library.]
WRIGHT, WILLIAM (1837–1899), missionary and author, born on 15 Jan. 1837 at Finnards, near Rathfriland, in co. Down, was the youngest child of William Wright, a North of Ireland farmer, by his wife, Miss Niblock. He was educated at a small country school, and supplemented the deficiencies of his instructors by a miscellaneous course of reading. Possessed of unusual ability, he resolved to prepare himself for the civil service, and, after passing a few months at the Belfast Royal Academical Institution, he matriculated in Queen's College in 1858. A visit to Belfast by Charles Haddon Spurgeon [q. v.] determined Wright to become a missionary, and on leaving Queen's College he studied theology at the assembly's college and at Geneva. About 1865 he proceeded to Damascus as missionary to the Jews. During the ten years that he spent in the East he acquired a knowledge of Arabic, studied the customs and topography of Palestine, and made expeditions in Syria and Northern Arabia. His ‘Account of Palmyra and Zenobia, with Travels and Adventures in Bashan and the Desert’ (London, 8vo), though not published until 1895, was in great part written during the journeys which it describes. While in the East he filled the post of special correspondent to the ‘Pall Mall Gazette.’ At Damascus he made the acquaintance of Edward Henry Palmer [q. v.] and of Sir Richard Burton. For Burton he had a high regard, and published an appreciative sketch of his character in October 1891 in the first number of the ‘Bookman,’ under the signature of ‘Salih.’
Returning to England, Wright succeeded Robert Baker Girdlestone (now Canon Girdlestone) as editorial superintendent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in June 1876. This post he retained until his death. During his tenure of office 150 new versions of the whole or parts of the Bible passed through his hands, and all the great vernacular versions of India, China, and other countries underwent revision.
Wright's literary labours were not limited by his official duties. While in Syria he made casts of the Hamath inscriptions, and from further investigations came to the conclusion that they were Hittite remains and that a Hittite empire had at one time existed in Asia Minor and Northern Syria. In 1884 he published ‘The Empire of the Hittites’ (London, 8vo), with a conjectural decipherment of Hittite inscriptions by Professor Archibald Henry Sayce, who had come to similar conclusions. A second edition of the book appeared in 1886, and Wright contributed the article on the ‘Hittites’ to ‘Chambers's Encyclopædia’ in 1895. The whole subject is still rather obscure, but Wright must be credited with assisting materially to elucidate it. In 1893 he published another work of some fame, ‘The Brontës in Ireland’ (London, 8vo), which reached a third edition within a year. It embodied many personal investigations by Wright, but some of his statements were controverted by J. Ramsden in 1897 in ‘The Brontë Homeland: or Misrepresentations rectified.’
In 1890 Wright was selected to represent the Bible Society at Shanghai at the conference of all the protestant missions of China, at which, on his initiative, it was resolved to prepare a standard version of the Bible in the chief languages of the empire to supersede the various versions in the same script at that time in use. Wright's last years were saddened by the long illness and death of his eldest son, W. D. Wright, a minister of the presbyterian church of England. He died on 31 July 1899 at his residence, 10 The Avenue, Upper Norwood, and was buried on 4 Aug. in West Norwood cemetery. He was twice married, and left a widow, three sons, and four daughters. In 1882 he received the honorary degree of D.D. from Glasgow University.
Besides the works already mentioned, Wright contributed to the ‘Contemporary Review’ ‘The Power behind the Pope,’ a vigorous narrative of the publication and eventual condemnation by the Vatican of the
