Born in Meriden, Connecticut and studied at Yale (B.A 1911, Ph.D 1915). In 1915 Williams started to lecture at Yale, served as a second lieutenant in the Army Signal Corps, in 1932 became a Full Professor, from 1934 Colgate Professor, and in 1944 Sterling Professor. Williams followed William Lyon Phelps, who held the only academic chair in existence for the field. He was Chair of his department in 1939-1945. Publishing initially on English literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, from the mid-1920s on he concentrated on American literature, which was handled as a young branch of English literature. His interest initially was in Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving, but in the late 1930s he turned his attention to Melville, though publishing only incidental works himself.
In 1935 Williams published a biography of Washington Irving in two volumes. After publishing this biography, Williams decided to turn his attention to Herman Melville. He directed his graduate students to do research on particular aspects or particular works in order to test the findings of the first generation of Melville scholars, known as the Melville Revival of the 1920s. "One man", said one of his students later, was "responsible for the proliferation of Melville …
