William Strang RA (13 February 1859 – 12 April 1921) was a Scottish painter and printmaker, notable for illustrating the works of Bunyan, Coleridge and Kipling.

[1] There, he was a pupil of Edward Poynter for three months,[2] before studying drawing and etching under Alphonse Legros at the Slade School of Fine Art for six years.

Some of his best etchings were done as series—one of the earliest, illustrating poet William Nicholson's Ballad of Aken Drum, is remarkable for clear, delicate workmanship in the shadow tones, showing great skill and power over his materials, and for strong drawing.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Strang's own Allegory of Death and The Plowman's Wife, have served him with suitable imaginative subjects.

Other etched portraits included those of Ernest Sichel and of his friend Joseph Benwell Clark, with whom Strang collaborated in illustrating Lucian's True History (1894)[3] Baron Munchausen (1895) and Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba (1896).

In 1902 Strang retired from the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, as a protest against the inclusion in its exhibitions of etched or engraved reproductions of pictures.

[6] Strang also ventured into literature, creating "Death and the Ploughman's Wife", an illustrated ballad in 1888 (published 1894 by Lawrence and Bullen).

[7][8] In 1918, he became President of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers and in 1921 was elected an Engraver Member of the Royal Academy.

[10] William had at least one granddaughter, Joan Strang, born of David's short-lived marriage to the English soprano Dora Labbette.