James Augustus St. John

Born in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire, in 1795, he became known as a British journalist, writer, and traveller. Early in life he was linked with radical journalism, and that energy seems to have stayed with him as his career expanded into biography, history, criticism, and travel writing.

He wrote widely and prolifically, with a strong interest in the Mediterranean, the Ottoman world, and Egypt. Among the works associated with him are travel books and studies of society and culture, showing a writer who liked to observe closely and explain unfamiliar places to British readers.

He died in 1875. Today he is remembered as one of those busy nineteenth-century literary figures whose career crossed several worlds at once: journalism, politics, travel, and popular nonfiction.