Writers and literary biographies

Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Addison Smith (1933–2021), Zambian-born South African adventure novelist, author of When the Lion Feeds and the Courtney, Ballantyne, and Ancient Egyptian series; over 140 million books sold in 30 languages.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922), English poet, diplomat, and anti-imperialist; husband of Lady Anne Blunt, cofounder of the Crabbet Arabian Stud; imprisoned in Ireland 1887; author of Love Sonnets of Proteus, The Future of Islam, and My Diaries.

Wilhelm Küchelbecker

Wilhelm Küchelbecker (Вильгельм Кюхельбекер) was a Russian poet and playwright of German descent, a classmate of Pushkin who took part in the Decembrist uprising of 1825 and died in Siberian exile in 1846.

Wilhelm Lehmann

Wilhelm Lehmann (1882–1968) was a German poet, novelist, and essayist, born in Venezuela, who won the Kleist Prize in 1923 and shaped younger poets like Günter Eich.

Wilhelm Lindemann

Wilhelm Lindemann (1828–1879) was a German Catholic priest and literary historian whose Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (1866) was the first Catholic history of German literature.

Wilhelm Meyer (German philologist)

Wilhelm Meyer (1845–1917) was a German classical philologist and medievalist, recorded as a co-founder of medieval Latin philology, who held the Göttingen chair from 1886.

Wilhelm Molitor

Wilhelm Molitor (1819–1880) was a German Catholic priest, poet, novelist, and canonist of the Rhine Palatinate, known for the Marian hymn "O Königin voll Herrlichkeit" and the "Domlieder".

Wilhelm Raabe

Wilhelm Raabe, who debuted as Jakob Corvinus with Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse in 1856, was a German novelist of poetic realism ranked with Fontane and Storm.

Wilkie Collins

Wilkie Collins (1824–1889), English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer, friend of Dickens and master of the sensation novel; author of The Woman in White and The Moonstone, pioneer of full-length detective fiction.

Will Self

Will Self (William Woodard Self), born 1961, is an English novelist and journalist known for satirical fiction; his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Willa Cather

Willa Cather (Wilella Sibert Cather, 1873–1947), American novelist and McClure's editor from Red Cloud, Nebraska; wrote O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop; won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours.

Willem Bilderdijk

Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831) was a Dutch poet and lawyer, the leading figure of the early Romantic movement in the Netherlands, with more than 300,000 lines of verse.

Willem Elsschot

Willem Elsschot, pen name of Antwerp writer Alfons Jozef de Ridder (1882–1960), was a Flemish novelist and poet whose Kaas (Cheese, 1933) is the most translated book from Flanders.

Willem Jan Otten

Willem Jan Otten (born 1951, Amsterdam) is a Dutch poet, novelist, playwright, and essayist who won the P.C. Hooftprijs 2014 for essays on literature, morality, and belief.

Willem Kloos

Willem Johannes Theodorus Kloos (1859–1938) was a Dutch poet and critic, co-founder of De Nieuwe Gids and leading theorist of the Tachtigers, the Movement of Eighty.

William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling

William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling (c.1567/1577–1640), Scottish poet, courtier, and Secretary of State for Scotland; obtained the 1621 charter naming Nova Scotia and devised its baronet scheme, but died in debt.

William Apess

William Apess (1798–1839) was a Pequot writer, activist, and Methodist minister who wrote the first known book-length autobiography by an Indigenous North American and led the Mashpee Wampanoag self-government campaign of the 1830s.

William Boyd (writer)

William Boyd (born 1952, Accra, Ghana) is a British novelist and screenwriter, author of A Good Man in Africa, An Ice-Cream War, Any Human Heart, Restless, and the 2013 James Bond novel Solo, known for whole-life fiction and the Nat Tate hoax.

William Carleton

William Carleton (1794–1869) was an Irish novelist and short-story writer, born to a Catholic tenant farmer in Prillisk, County Tyrone, best known for Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), American poet and physician of Rutherford, New Jersey; author of "The Red Wheelbarrow" and Paterson; dictum "no ideas but in things"; Pulitzer-winning modernist.

William Chapman (poet)

William Chapman, born George William Alphred, was a French-Canadian poet and journalist (1850–1917) who published five collections and was a laureate of the Académie française.

William Congreve

William Congreve (1670–1729), English Restoration playwright and poet, master of the comedy of manners; wrote The Old Bachelor, Love for Love, The Mourning Bride, and The Way of the World (1700).

William Cowper

William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet and translator of Homer, author of The Task and John Gilpin, Olney Hymns collaborator with John Newton, antislavery poet, pioneer of Romantic poetry.

William Cullen Bryant

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was an American poet and newspaper editor, known for the nature poem "Thanatopsis" and for editing the New-York Evening Post for nearly fifty years.

William Davenant

William Davenant was an English poet and dramatist, Poet Laureate after Ben Jonson, who staged The Siege of Rhodes in 1656, generally regarded as the first English opera.

William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) was an American novelist, critic, and editor of the Atlantic Monthly who championed literary realism; his major novels include The Rise of Silas Lapham.

William Egginton

William Egginton is an American literary scholar at Johns Hopkins University known for books on Cervantes, Borges, and Kant, including The Rigor of Angels (2023).

William Empson

Sir William Empson (1906–1984), English poet and critic, author of Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), a foundation of New Criticism and close reading; professor at Sheffield, knighted 1979.

William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley (1849-1903), English poet, critic, and editor, author of "Invictus"; wrote it while Joseph Lister saved his leg; edited the National Observer and inspired Long John Silver.