A physician, amateur geologist and historian, William James Anderson was born at sea off the Danish coast, to Scottish parents
He studied medicine at Edinburgh and obtained the degree of MD and a LRCS (Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons). He was a physician in the Maritimes in the 1830s where he fostered his taste for the history and geology of Nova Scotia by exploring and investigating mining operations there, His health collapsed during a typhus epidemic in Pictou He left the medical profession and the Maritimes in 1847 and worked in the lumber business in Upper Canada before moving Toronto in the 1850s.

He returned briefly to the mining district in the Maritimes and settled in Quebec City in 1860 to resume his profession. He became acquainted with Dr James Douglas, a fellow mining enthusiast and member of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. Dr. Anderson led a group of members who revived the society, reanimated its interest in securing and publishing documents on Quebec, and re-established its library and museum. His first papers in its Transactions in 1863 were on the goldfields of Nova Scotia and of the world, and the bitumen of Point de Lévy. He continued to publish in this subject area. On a visit to Nova Scotia in 1862 he had toured Acadian regions and inspected the Provincial Archives at Halifax.

In 1866, he began a series of major historical contributions in the Transactions of the Literary and Historical Society with historiography a particular theme. These papers dealt with the life of the Duke of Kent, including letters from him held by the de Salaberry family, one of whom had been his patient. In writing these essays Anderson used archival papers in Halifax, arranged for the transfer of others from Halifax to Quebec, and got archival materials transferred to Canada from Britain. While on the executive of the Literary and Historical Society, he fostered publication of two series of Historical documents (1866, 1871) and his last publication in 1872 advocated an archive for Canada. He counted other notable historians of the confederation years among his friends. Anderson died in 1873 of tuberculosis in Quebec City.