William Arthur Dunkerley (12 November 1852 – 23 January 1941) was an English journalist, novelist and poet.

His poetry includes Bees in Amber: A Little Book of Thoughtful Verse (1913), which became a bestseller.

In 1918, wrote the foreword and assessed the poetry of the administrator of the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service, Mary H. J. Henderson In War and Peace: Songs of a Scotswoman.

His novel A Mystery of the Underground (1897) is notable both as an early murder story about a serial killer and a very early crime story set on the London Underground (District Line).

[4][5] In February 1892 Robert Barr and Dunkerley founded The Idler, a monthly "general interest magazine, one of the first to appear following the enthusiastic reception of The Strand, but not a slavish imitation".