Isaac Williams was the most innovative and productive of a group of Tractarian devotional poets that flourished in the early and mid-Victorian years and that also included John Keble and John Henry Newman. Williams's several volumes of illustrated verse and verse meditations carried devotional poetry into new regions; however, his fame has faded almost entirely in this century and only recently has he received renewed scholarly and critical attention.

Williams was the third of four sons born to Isaac Lloyd and Anne Davies Williams of Cwmcynfelin, near Aberystwyth, Wales. Williams spent his early years in London, where his father was a barrister, but frequent visits to his birthplace and the strong Welsh associations of his family insured that he always felt an intense attraction for the Welsh countryside. He was educated privately, then at Harrow, and subsequently at Trinity College, Oxford, from which he received his degree in...