Francis Joseph Steingass was a British linguist and orientalist of German Jewish descent.
Francis Henry King was a British novelist and short story writer. He worked for the British Council for 15 years, with positions in Europe and Japan. For 25 years, he was a chief book reviewer for the Sunday Telegraph, and for 10 years its theatre critic.
Francis Lister Hawks was an American writer, historian, educator and priest of the Episcopal Church. After practicing law with some distinction, Hawks became an Episcopal priest in 1827 and proved a brilliant and impressive preacher, holding livings in New Haven, Philadelphia, New York City and New Orleans, and declining several bishoprics. However, scandals during the 1830s and 40s led him to posts on the American frontier and rejection of his selection as bishop of Mississippi, Hawks was the first president of the University of Louisiana Hawks then moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and eventually returned to New York City.
Francis La Flesche was the first professional Native American ethnologist; he worked with the Smithsonian Institution. He specialized in Omaha and Osage cultures. Working closely as a translator and researcher with the anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher, La Flesche wrote several articles and a book on the Omaha, plus more numerous works on the Osage. He made valuable original recordings of their traditional songs and chants. Beginning in 1908, he collaborated with American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman to develop an opera, Da O Ma (1912), based on his stories of Omaha life, but it was never produced. A collection of La Flesche's stories was published posthumously in 1998.
Francis Lathom was a British gothic novelist and playwright.
Francis Edward Ledwidge was a 20th-century Irish poet. From Slane, County Meath, and sometimes known as the "poet of the blackbirds", he was later also known as a First World War war poet. He befriended the established writer Lord Dunsany, who helped with publication of his works. He was killed in action at Ypres in 1917.
Francis Lieber was a jurist and political philosopher commissioned by the U.S. Army to write the Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, the Lieber Code of military law that governed the battlefield conduct of the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861-1865).
Francis Loraine Petre was a British civil servant in India and a military historian upon his retirement. He wrote a two-volume regimental history of the Norfolk Regiment, but is best known for his works on the Napoleonic Wars. The grandson of the 11th Baron Petre, he was educated at Oscott College and joined the Bar in 1880. He took the civil service exam and subsequently joined the Indian Civil Service. He retired as Commissioner of Allahabad in 1900.
Francis Lynde was an American author. Three of his books were adapted to film. He was born in Lewiston, New York, and wrote adventure novels set in the American West in the early 20th century. The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library has a collection of his papers.
Francis Marion ("Frank") Gibbons was the secretary to the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1970 to 1986 and a church general authority from 1986 until 1991.
