John Richard Green was an English historian.

John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.

John Russell Bartlett was an American historian and linguist.

John Skelton, also known as John Shelton, possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet and tutor to King Henry VIII of England. Skelton died in Westminster and was buried in St. Margaret's Church, although no trace of the tomb remains.

John Smith was an English soldier, explorer, colonial governor, admiral of New England, and author. He played an important role in the establishment of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, in the early 17th century. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony between September 1608 and August 1609, and he led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay, during which he became the first English explorer to map the Chesapeake Bay area. Later, he explored and mapped the coast of New England. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Báthory, Prince of Transylvania, and his friend Mózes Székely.

John Spargo was a British political writer who, later in life, became an expert in the history and crafts of Vermont. At first Spargo was active in the Socialist Party of America. A Methodist preacher he tried to meld the Protestant Social Gospel with Marxist socialism in Marxian Socialism and Religion: A Study of the Relation of the Marxian Theories to the Fundamental Principles of Religion (1915). He also founded a settlement house in Yonkers, N.Y. Spargo moved steadily to the right after 1917 when he supported American intervention in World War I. With AFL leader Samuel Gompers he organized the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy in 1917. Spargo helped draft the Colby Note that formalised the Wilson administration's anti-communist policies. He strongly denounced the Bolshevik Revolution in Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy (1919). He opposed the foreign policy of the New Deal, especially its recognition of the USSR in 1933. He supported the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1930s and Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. He endorsed Barry Goldwater In the 1964 Elections.

John Spencer Bassett was an American historian. He was a professor at Trinity College, and is best known today for the "Bassett Affair" in 1903 when he publicly criticized racism among Southern elites, and called Booker T. Washington, "all in all the greatest man, save General Lee, born in the South in 100 years." Despite widespread outrage, the college trustees refused to accept Bassett's resignation by a vote of 18 to 7. After Trinity, he became a professor of history at Smith College in Massachusetts. and was the executive director of the American Historical Association for many years.

John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters."

John Stephen Farmer also known as J. S. Farmer was a British lexicographer, spiritualist and writer. He was most well known for his seven volume dictionary of slang.

John Stoughton was an English Nonconformist minister and historian.