J. E. (John Ernest) Hodder-Williams

John Ernest Hodder-Williams, often published as J. E. Hodder-Williams or Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams, was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1876 and died in 1927. Contemporary records identify him as an English publisher as well as a writer, and note that he was educated at the City of London School, University College London, and in Paris and Berlin.

He is closely associated with Hodder & Stoughton, and surviving catalogs and library records show a range of books under his name, including The Life of Sir George Williams and The Father of the Red Triangle. He is probably most widely remembered today for One Young Man (1917), a wartime book he edited from the writings of Reginald Davis, bringing a personal soldier's experience of the First World War to a broad readership.

The record also suggests a life lived partly in public service: he was knighted in 1910, and published under the title Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams. While not as widely known now as some of his contemporaries, his books still offer a direct window into Edwardian biography, wartime publishing, and the moral language of Britain during the First World War.