A poet and a novelist, William Abrahams became one of the leading literary editors in the American publishing scene. He worked with many renowned writers including Joyce Carol Oates, Lillian Hellman, Diane Johnson, Brian Moore, Thomas Flanagan, and Pauline Kael. Beginning as a poet, Abrahams released his first novel Interval in Carolina (1945) to good reviews. He followed with By the Beautiful Sea (1947) and Imperial Waltz (1954) before beginning a career in editing for Atlantic Monthly Press in 1963. In 1965 he began supervising the O. Henry Awards, editing annual anthologies of the best entries, which he continued until his retirement in 1996. Abrahams also produced four non-fiction works that he co-authored with historian Peter Stansky, Journey to the Frontier; Two Roads to the Spanish Civil War (1966), The Unknown Orwell (1972), Orwell: The Transformation (1980), and London's Burning: Life, Death, and Art in the Second World War (1994).

In addition to his editorial career, Abrahams also served as a trustee for the Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett Literary Estates, and as a member of the William Saroyan Foundation. Abrahams' longstanding relationship with Hellman as both editor and friend, subsequently led to his being named official biographer for Hellman in 1983. Abrahams worked sporadically on the Hellman biography until his death in 1998, never reaching completion due to his extensive editorial commitments and deteriorating health.