William Craig Brownlee was an American clergyman, professor of languages and author. He was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland and was the fourth son of the Laird of Torfoot. President William McKinley was a distant cousin.

William Cranston Lawton was an American author and educator.

William Crossing (1847–1928) was a writer and chronicler of Dartmoor and the lives of its inhabitants. He lived successively at South Brent, Brentor and at Mary Tavy but died at Plymouth, Devon.

William Cullen was a Scottish physician, chemist and agriculturalist, and professor at the Edinburgh Medical School. Cullen was a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment: He was David Hume's physician, and was friends with Joseph Black, Henry Home, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and Adam Smith, among others.

William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry early in his life. He soon relocated to New York and took up work as an editor at various newspapers. He became one of the most significant poets in early literary America and has been grouped among the fireside poets for his accessible, popular poetry.

William Cunningham was a Scottish economic historian and Anglican priest. He was a proponent of the historical method in economics and an opponent of free trade.

William Cureton was an English Orientalist.

William David Cohan is an American business writer.

William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple is a Delhi-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, photographer, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival.

William Dana Orcutt (1870-1953) was an American book designer, typeface designer, historian, and author.