William Cole was primarily known for his more than fifty anthologies for children and adults, including the children's poetry anthology Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls: Poems. Cole's anthologies vary in subject matter, reflecting his enthusiasm for poetry, humor, and folk songs. A Horn Book contributor, in a review of Man's Funniest Friend: The Dog in Stories, Reminiscences, Poems, and Cartoons, described Cole as "an enthusiastic anthologist" who creates his collections with "gusto." Cole was committed to organizing distinctive books designed to spark children's interest in poetry and reading. He stated in the Something about the Author Autobiography Series (SAAS) that "any anthology, to serve its full purpose, should lead the reader to further books." Cole is also an author of several children's books of poetry and humor, including What's Good for a Six-Year-Old? and A Boy Named Mary Jane, and Other Silly Verse.

Born in Staten Island, New York, in 1919, Cole was educated in Catholic schools in various suburbs of New York City. In his early teens, he suffered a major illness and was required to take a year off from school. In his essay for SAAS, Cole discussed how he spent this time developing a life-long passion for books: "The year away from school was good in that it started me reading. The 'young adult' books in those days were pretty much restricted to books in series and, naturally, I read all the Tom Swifts. And I recall the particular pleasure I took in a humor-adventure series by an author named Leo Edwards--the Poppy Ott and Jerry Todd books; nobody talks about them now. When eventually I moved to the adult side of the public library, I ran through the 'Jalna' series, stem to stern, and I read hundreds of books of sea adventure."

Cole graduated from high school in the midst of the economic depression and high unemployment of the 1930s. After studying briefly at a journalism school in Manhattan, he began the difficult task of finding a job. Eventually he moved with his mother to Rye, New York, where he worked first in a deli and then in a bookshop. Cole wrote about this early experience in the book business in SAAS: "I loved it; the thrill of those boxes of new books appearing every morning; the excitement of arranging them on the shelves, of ordering new ones from the wholesaler by phone. There I was, recommending books to the same ladies I had been slicing liverwurst for the previous week. I was greatly impressed when I met real, live authors, and put together elaborate window displays for local ones. It was a great job for a book-mad boy."

After being promoted to manager of the Rye bookstore in his early twenties, Cole was drafted to serve in World War II. The army opened new doors of opportunity for Cole, as he described in SAAS: "I had completed only two weeks of excruciatingly boring 'basic training' when, one morning, I was getting my hair...