Blanche Colton Williams (February 10, 1879 – August 9, 1944) was an American author, editor, department head and professor of English literature, and pioneer in women’s higher education.

He spent much of his time teaching and reading, while his wife pursued the hard work of the family farm in order to protect his delicate health (he later died of tuberculosis).

About that discovery, she would later write in her biography of Eliot: “[i]n the college dining room four hundred of us waited after dinner … for the first tap of the bell at which we rose to form in line and march out.

[3] These textbooks, in addition to her forty years of service, were cited as testaments to her enduring legacy in a New York Times editorial written upon her retirement from Hunter College.

[3] The resulting work was described in the New York Times Book Section: “Scholarly in the extreme, it is nevertheless winning in the manner of writing; sound, it is also vividly dramatic, wholly satisfactory, analytical portrayal of a great novelist and a great woman,” reaching “a high level of biographical writing.”[9] The international success of George Eliot in 1936 prompted Williams to continue her biographical research.

Its release coincided with a great Red Cross drive and parade in New York City with many stores featuring the book at the center of elaborate displays.

[3] Her biography of John Keats, Forever Young, appeared in 1943 and was described by New Republic as “unpretentious and free of sentimentality” and “engaging and fresh.”[10] In 1943, Williams traveled to Mississippi to visit family and to conduct a series of lectures at her alma mater and never returned to New York.

In the spring of the following year, suffering from cancer, she moved in with family members and died on August 9, 1944, in Jackson, MS.[11] Her ashes were interred at the foot of her parents’ graves in Kosciusko.

The May 1925 issue of Opportunity lists a number of prizewinners who went on to enjoy successful publishing careers: Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Sterling Brown, and Franklin Frazier.

Williams later recommended prize-winning contest stories to the O’Henry Prize Committee, including John Matheus’s "Fog" (which won first prize in the Short Story division),[14] Arthur Huff Fauset’s “Symphonesque,” and Eugene Gordon’s “Rootbound.”[15]: 97  She later met Dorothy West at the Opportunity contest banquet[15]: 97  and became an important champion and mentor of the young author’s work.

[15]: 97 A collection of over 1000 short story anthologies, first editions, and annotated volumes donated by Williams resides at the Fant Memorial Library at her alma mater, now named Mississippi University for Women.