Correction Appended

Garth Williams, the artist who illustrated E. B. White's "Stuart Little" and "Charlotte's Web" and scores of other children's classics, died on Wednesday at his home in Guanajuato, Mexico. He was 84.

With the precision of Durer but with his own sense of innocence and wonderment, Mr. Williams created a world of storybook characters. Although the books were written by a diverse range of authors, the drawings all had Mr. Williams's impeccable, heartwarming touch.

Generations of children picture their favorite fictional characters as drawn by Mr. Williams: that dapper mouse Stuart Little; the kindhearted spider Charlotte and her friend, Wilbur the pig; and bears, dogs, kittens, crickets, elves, fairies, children and grown-ups in books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, George Selden, Charlotte Zolotow, Else H. Minarik and many others. Mr. Williams also wrote the text for seven children's books, but it is primarily as an illustrator that his work is cherished.

He believed that books "given, or read, to children can have a profound influence." For that reason, he said, he used his illustrations to try to "awaken something of importance . . . humor, responsibility, respect for others, interest in the world at large."

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Born in New York City, Mr. Williams was the son of artists: his father was a cartoonist, his mother a landscape painter. As he said, "Everybody in my home was always either painting or drawing." His family moved to a farm in New Jersey, where he grew up, he said, as "a typical Huckleberry Finn, roaming barefoot around the farm, watching the farmer milk his cows by hand." Clearly he was soaking up bucolic atmosphere that much later would be used to his artistic advantage.

After his parents moved to England, he decided to become an architect, then switched to painting and sculpture. Graduating from the Royal Academy of Art, he was briefly the headmaster of the Luton Art School outside of London, resigning after he won a British Prix de Rome as a sculptor. In Italy, he immersed himself in art. During World War II, he was wounded in an air raid while serving as a Red Cross ambulance dispatcher in London.

Returning to the United States, he tried to become a cartoonist at The New Yorker, but his work was rejected, he said, because his style "was considered too wild and European." He did, however, publish small drawings in the magazine. Ursula Nordstrom, the editor of children's books at Harper and Row, was more encouraging, and told him she was expecting a manuscript that he might illustrate. In a fortuitous coincidence, when the manuscript arrived the author had pinned a note to it saying, "Try Garth Williams." The author was E. B. White, the book was "Stuart Little."

In his review of "Stuart Little" in The New York Times Book Review in 1945, Malcolm Cowley praised the book as "one of the best children's books published this year," but never mentioned the name of the illustrator (often Mr. Williams's fate).

"Stuart Little" was such an enormous success that Mr. Williams decided to become a full-time illustrator of children's books. In 1952, he and Mr. White collaborated on "Charlotte's Web," the story of a spider who saves the life of a pig. In her review in The Times Book Review, Eudora Welty said the book was about "friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time." She added, "As a piece of work it is just about perfect." Naturally, she did not mention the artist, but by calling the book "adorable," she used an adjective that Mr. Williams could keep as a signature.

During the 1950's, Mr. Williams also illustrated Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House on the Prairie" and its sequels. In addition, he illustrated books by Margaret Wise Brown, Russell Hoban and Randall Jarrell, among others. Among his most popular books were those written by George Selden, beginning with "The Cricket in Times Square."

In 1958, Mr. Williams wrote and illustrated "The Rabbits' Wedding," which became the subject of controversy because the book dealt with a marriage between a white rabbit and a black rabbit. It was attacked by the White Citizens Council in Alabama and charged with promoting racial integration and was removed from general circulation by the Alabama Public Library Service Division. In the book, the rabbits are married by moonlight with a peaceable kingdom of animals in attendance.

For the past 40 years, Mr. Williams lived in a hacienda that he built in Guanajuato and in his home in San Antonio, Tex.

He is survived by his wife, Leticia; five daughters, Fiona Hulbert of Brussels, Bettina Shore of Toronto, Jessica Rose of New York City, Estyn, of Newport, R.I., and Dilys, of Guanajuato; and by a son, Dylan, of New York City. His daughter Fiona was the model for Fern, the little girl in "Charlotte's Web."

Correction: May 23, 1996, Thursday A caption on May 10 with the obituary of the illustrator Garth Williams misidentified the pig shown with Charlotte, the spider, in a drawing of his from "Charlotte's Web" by E. B. White. The pig was Uncle, not Wilbur.

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