text: Publication history "William Wilson" was published in the October 1839 issue of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, though it appeared earlier that year in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present dated for 1840. The tale was later translated into French in December 1844, printed in the Paris newspaper La Quotidienne in two installments. This was the first translation of Poe's work to a language other than English and marked Poe's introduction to France.
  Critical reception
  When Poe wrote to Washington Irving asking for a word of endorsement, he specifically requested a response to "William Wilson", calling it "my best effort". Irving responded, "It is managed in a highly picturesque Style and the Singular and Mysterious interest is well sustained throughout". Thomas Mann said of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Double: A Petersburg Poem, which explores a similar doppelgänger theme, "by no means improved on Edgar Allan Poe's 'William Wilson,' a tale that deals with the same old romantic motif in a way far more profound on the moral side and more successfully resolving the critical [theme] in the poetic".
  In Poe's review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, Poe noted that the short story "Howe's Masquerade" was similar to "William Wilson". As he wrote, "not only are the two general conceptions identical but there are various points of similarity".
  Adaptations
  In 1913, "William Wilson" was freely adapted into The Student of Prague, a German film directed by Stellan Rye and Paul Wegener and starring Wegener. A 1926 version was also made in Germany and directed by Henrik Galeen and starred Conrad Veidt. A third German adaptation, made in 1935, was directed by Arthur Robison and starred Anton Walbrook.