James Augustus St John, born James John, was a journalist, author, and traveller. He married to Eliza Caroline Agar Hansard, by whom he had eleven children. From 1820 to 1822, he was editor of The Patriot newspaper, in Plymouth then in Exeter. In 1824, he was sub-editor of the Oriental Herald (and poet under the name Bion) and published ‘Abdallah, an Oriental Poem’ (1824) under the pseudonym Horace Gwynne. From 1827 to 1829, he was editor of London Weekly Review. In 1829, he left London and lived for three years in France and Switzerland; from 1832 to 1834 he was in Egypt. In 1834, St John returned to London and contributed to the leading periodicals, mainly on politics and foreign affairs.

Publications include: The Hindoos (2 vols., 1834–5); Journal of a Residence in Normandy (1831); Egypt and Mohammed Ali (2 vols., 1834); The History of the Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece (3 vols., 1842); Oriental album. Characters, costumes, and modes of life, in the valley of the Nile (1848); Isis: an Egyptian Pilgrimage (2 vols., 1853) and There and Back Again (2 vols., 1853).

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.