Sir William Gurney Benham, FSA, FRHS (/ˈbɛnəm/; 16 February 1859 – 13 May 1944) was a British newspaper editor, published author and three times Mayor of Colchester.

[4] In 1884 he took over the family printing business and began his 59-year editorship of the Essex County Standard.

[3] He remained editor of the Standard until 1943,[6] and was a director of the Colchester Gas Company for over forty years, being chairman until his resignation on grounds of ill health the day before his death.

A "conscientious as well as an excellent scholar",[7][6] he is now mainly known through his many publications, many of which are transcriptions of official documents from mediaeval times, particularly those related to his home town of Colchester.

He also compiled a number of books of quotations, leading a reviewer in the Journal of Education to comment after his death, "it is remarkable that one man — Sir William Gurney Benham — was able to collect and arrange some fifty thousand quotations and proverbs".