Adrianne Wadewitz, a scholar of 18th-century British literature who became one of the most prolific and influential editors of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, died on April 8 in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 37.

The cause was head injuries sustained in a fall on March 29 while Ms. Wadewitz (pronounced WAH-de-wits) was rock climbing in Joshua Tree National Park, said Peter B. James, Ms. Wadewitz’s partner.

She had taken up rock climbing only in the last couple of years, and on her personal blog she described the thrill of creating “a new narrative” about herself beyond that of a bookish, piano-playing Wikipedia contributor.

The bulk of Ms. Wadewitz’s work at Wikipedia concerned biographies of women, particularly writers and thinkers from the era that she studied to earn her Ph.D. An early contribution, or “edit,” was in 2006, when she “punched up the intro” to the article about Jane Austen, to note Austen’s “masterful use of both indirect speech and irony.”