Author and traveller. Educated at village school in Carmarthenshire; with help of a clergyman, became good classical scholar and linguist. In 1824, named assistant editor of Oriental Herald, London; co-founder, 1827, of London Weekly Review. Later wrote letters on politics in Sunday Times and leaders in Daily Telegraph. Contributed to annuals, and to Athenaeum, Bentley's Miscellany, Sharpe's, and other periodicals. Lived at various times on the Continent; travelled extensively in north Africa and in the East. His books based on this residence and travel included Journal of a Residence in Normandy, 1831; Egypt, and Mohammed Ali, 1834; Isis: an Egyptian Pilgrimage, 1853; There and Back Again in Search of Beauty, 1853. Wrote biography of Louis Napoleon and of Sir Walter Ralegh; also historical and other works; five works of fiction. Edited Religio Medici, Pilgrim's Progress, Milton's prose works, and other English classics.

"OId Cairo and Its Mosque" is assigned in the Office Book merely to "St. John". It may be by either J. A. St. John or Bayle St. John. The payment notation—"Sent by W.H.W. to J. A. St. John"—may mean that J. A. St. John was author of the article. Usually, however, for items of single authorship, the Office Book states the name of the person to whom payment was made only when that person is other than the author. Wills may have sent to J. A. St. John, who was then presumably in England, payment for an article by his son, who (according to Dictionary of National Biography) was living in Paris at the time that he began writing for H.W. Other items assigned merely to "St. John" are by Bayle St. John.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography