author
1817–1899
Little reliable biographical information was easy to confirm for this nineteenth-century writer, but the dates suggest a Victorian-era author whose work likely belongs to a broad tradition of religious or historical popular writing.
by J. (John) Williams
The name given here is very common, and I was not able to confirm a trustworthy, clearly matching author profile for J. (John) Williams (1817–1899) from the sources I checked. Rather than guess, this overview stays cautious.
If this is the author associated with a specific title in your library, a fuller biography may be possible by tracing that book’s original title page, publisher records, or catalog entries from major libraries and digitization projects. Those sources often clarify whether an author used initials, a pen name, or a common family name that makes modern identification difficult.
For now, the safest summary is that this appears to be a nineteenth-century author writing under the name J. Williams or John Williams, active in the 1800s and now somewhat obscure in surviving mainstream reference sources.