C. J. (Charles James) Wills

Born in 1842, Charles James Wills was an English physician, traveller, and author. He trained in medicine and later served as a medical officer with the British Telegraph Department in Persia, an experience that shaped the writing he is best remembered for.

Wills spent many years in Persia between the 1860s and 1880s, and his best-known books grew directly from that time. In the Land of the Lion and Sun is especially notable for its detailed, readable picture of Persian life, travel, and society as he experienced it.

Alongside his travel writing, he also published fiction. He died in 1912, leaving behind work that still interests readers looking for first-hand English accounts of nineteenth-century Persia.