John Robert Fowles was an English novelist of international renown, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work was influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
John Foxe, an English clergyman, theologian, and historian, notable for his martyrology Actes and Monuments, telling of Christian martyrs throughout Western history, but particularly the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the 14th century and in the reign of Mary I. The book was widely owned and read by English Puritans and helped to mould British opinion on the Catholic Church for several centuries.
John Francis Campbell, also known as Young John of Islay was a Scottish author and scholar who specialised in Celtic studies, considered an authority on the subject.
Sir John Francis Davis, 1st Baronet was a British diplomat and sinologist who served as second Governor of Hong Kong from 1844 to 1848. Davis was the first President of Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong.
John Franklin Crowell served as president of Trinity College, the predecessor of Duke University, from 1887 to 1894. Crowell studied economics at Yale University, Columbia University and the University of Berlin. Crowell is primarily known for overseeing Trinity's movement to Durham, North Carolina and for reforming Trinity's curriculum, along with Joseph L. Armstrong, to be more in line with the German research university model. Toward that end Crowell persuaded the competing student literary societies to combine their libraries into a single college collection, where he personally catalogued the books and kept hours at a reference desk to encourage proper research methods. He also corrected the Latin in the college motto. Crowell increased the number of visiting lecturers at Trinity, and helped establish several academic student publications, one of which, the literary magazine The Archive is the second oldest such publication in the United States. Crowell also served as the head coach of the football program from 1888–1889, compiling a 3–2 record. After resigning from Duke, Crowell became head of the Department of Economics and Sociology at Smith College. He received an honorary LL.D. degree from Trinity in 1917.
John Frederick Archbold (1785–1870) was a barrister and legal writer. He was the first editor of the English criminal law textbook Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, which is still routinely used in court today.