William Edward Hartpole Lecky was an Irish historian, essayist, and political theorist with Whig proclivities. His major work was an eight-volume History of England during the Eighteenth Century.

William Eleroy Curtis was an American journalist, author, diplomat, political activist, and exhibitor. He was a prominent proponent of Pan-Americanism. Curtis' partisan reporting earned him patronage appointments and advanced his ideological goals. His career reflected the influence of bias, cronyism, and imperialism on journalism during the Gilded Age. Curtis held a series of leadership roles in the State Department, as well as the supranational organizations which anticipated the Organization of American States.

William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton (1786–1853), one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. Channing was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. His religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists although he never countenanced their views, which he saw as extreme. His espousal of the developing philosophy and theology of Unitarianism was displayed especially in his "Baltimore Sermon" of May 5, 1819, given at the ordination of the theologian and educator Jared Sparks (1789–1866) as the first minister of the newly organized First Independent Church of Baltimore.

William Elliot Griffis was an American orientalist, Congregational minister, lecturer, and prolific author.

William Ernest Henley was an English poet, writer, critic and editor. Though he wrote several books of poetry, Henley is remembered most often for his 1875 poem "Invictus". A fixture in London literary circles, the one-legged Henley might have been the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's character Long John Silver, while his young daughter Margaret Henley inspired J. M. Barrie's choice of the name Wendy for the heroine of his play Peter Pan (1904).

William Francis Nolan was an American author who wrote hundreds of stories in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and crime fiction genres.

William Falconer was a Scottish epic poet concerned mainly with life at sea. He also compiled a dictionary of marine terms.

William Farquhar Payson was an American author and editor.

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where Faulkner spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.

General Sir William Francis Patrick Napier KCB was a British soldier in the British Army and a military historian.