William Allen (January 2, 1784 – July 16, 1868) was an American biographer, scholar and academic.

He was largely responsible for establishing the Medical School of Maine at Bowdoin College in 1820.

[3] He prepared his American Biographical and Historical Dictionary (1809), the first work of general biography published in the United States.

In 1820 he went to Bowdoin College, over which institution he presided until 1839, when he resigned and devoted himself to literary studies.

He wrote Junius Unmasked, in which he sought to prove that Lord Sackville was the author of the Junius letters (Boston, 1828); Psalms and Hymns (1835); Memoirs of Dr. Eleazar Wheelock and of Dr. John Codman (1853); A Discourse at the Close of the Second Century of the Settlement at Northampton, Massachusetts (1854); Wunnissoo, or the Vale of Housatonnuck, a poem (Boston, 1856); a Dudleian lecture at Cambridge; a book of Christian Sonnets (Northampton, 1860); Poems of Nazareth and the Cross (1866); Sacred Songs (1867); and numerous pamphlets, and contributed biographical articles to Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit.