William Young

Little biographical information about this William Young is easy to confirm, but library and book records do establish him as an author active in the 19th century, born in 1809 and died in 1888. His surviving works show a writer interested in both storytelling and verse, and in bringing French literature into English.

Young is associated with Mathieu Ropars: et cetera, published in New York by G. P. Putnam & Son in 1868. Records for that volume describe it as a mix of short fiction and poems, suggesting a flexible, magazine-friendly style rather than a single long novel.

He is also credited with English renderings of songs and poems by Pierre-Jean de Béranger, including collections such as Béranger: two hundred of his lyrical poems, done into English verse and One hundred songs of Pierre-Jean de Béranger. A Syracuse University finding aid for William Young correspondence notes letters connected with fellow members of the Authors Club and mentions his play Pendragon, hinting at a broader literary life than the surviving basic records fully capture.