William Elder was a Scottish engraver who worked in London, where he was employed mainly by booksellers.

Works

He engraved many portraits as frontispieces, but was expert as an engraver of writing; his engraved portraits are mostly copied from older engravings. Among these were those of:

• Ben Jonson
  Ben Jonson
  Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
  
  , prefixed to the folio edition of his works (1692) and copied from Vaughan's engraving in the first edition (1616);
• John Ray
  John Ray
  John Ray was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Until 1670, he wrote his name as John Wray. From then on, he used 'Ray', after "having ascertained that such had been the practice of his family before him".He published important works on botany,...
  
  , from a drawing by William Faithorne
  William Faithorne
  William Faithorne , often "the Elder", , English painter and engraver, was born in London and was apprenticed to William Peake....
  
  , prefixed to his Wisdom of God manifested in the Creation (1701);
• Theodore de Mayerne
  Theodore de Mayerne
  Sir Théodore Turquet de Mayerne was a Swiss-born physician who treated kings of France and England and advanced the theories of Paracelsus....
  
  ;
• Dr. Richard Morton
  Richard Morton (physician)
  Richard Morton was an English physician who was the first to state that tubercles were always present in the tuberculosis disease of the lungs. In Morton's time, this wasting disease was termed consumption, or by its Greek name of phthisis...
  
  , from a picture by Orchard;
• Charles Snell, writing-master, from a picture by Hargrave;
• William Sancroft
  William Sancroft
  William Sancroft was the 79th Archbishop of Canterbury.- Life :Sancroft was born at Ufford Hall in Fressingfield, Suffolk, son of Francis Sandcroft and Margaret Sandcroft née Butcher...
  
  , John Pearson, the Earl of Oxford
  Earl of Oxford
  Earl of Oxford is a dormant title in the Peerage of England, held for several centuries by the de Vere family from 1141 until the death of the 20th earl in 1703. The Veres were also hereditary holders of the office of master or Lord Great Chamberlain from 1133 until the death of the 18th Earl in 1625...
  
  , and others.

He also engraved the plates in John Savage's edition of Richard Knolles

Richard Knolles

Richard Knolles was an English historian, famous for his account of the Ottoman Empire, the first major description in the English language....

 and Paul Rycaut

Paul Rycaut

Sir Paul Rycaut FRS was a British diplomat and historian, and authority on the Ottoman Empire.-Life:...

's History of the Turks (2 vols. London, 1701). He engraved his own portrait twice, once in a fur cap from a crayon drawing, and again in a wig.