Charles Walter Stansby Williams (20 September 1886 – 15 May 1945) was an English poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic.

His father Walter was a journalist and foreign business correspondent for an importing firm, writing in French and German,[1][2] who was a 'regular and valued' contributor of verse, stories and articles to many popular magazines.

The Williams family lived in 'shabby-genteel' circumstances, owing to Walter's increasing blindness and the decline of the firm by which he was employed, in Holloway.

[5] Educated at St Albans School, Williams was awarded a scholarship to University College London, but he left in 1904 without attempting to gain a degree due to an inability to pay tuition fees.

He was employed by the Oxford University Press (OUP) as a proofreading assistant in 1908 and quickly climbed to the position of editor.

[7] Although chiefly remembered as a novelist, Williams also published poetry, works of literary criticism, theology, drama, history, biography, and a voluminous number of book reviews.

Williams has been described by Colin Manlove as one of the three main writers of "Christian fantasy" in the twentieth century (the other two being C. S. Lewis and T. F.

Williams, however, regarded his most important work to be his extremely dense and complex Arthurian poetry, of which two books were published, Taliessin through Logres (1938) and The Region of the Summer Stars (1944), and more remained unfinished at his death.

[14] In 1917 Williams married his first sweetheart, Florence Conway, following a long courtship during which he presented her with a sonnet sequence that would later become his first published book of poetry, The Silver Stair.

Williams was an unswerving and devoted member of the Church of England, reputedly with a tolerance of the scepticism of others and a firm belief in the necessity of a "doubting Thomas" in any apostolic body.

Coincidentally, Lewis had just finished reading Williams's novel The Place of the Lion and had written a similar note of congratulation.