The youngest surviving son of Henry II and a controversial ruler, King John became a popular figure for fictionalization after his death, his most popular portrayals being the eponymous character in Shakespeare's King John and the villain of the Robin Hood legends. During his reign, King John lost the Angevin Empire with his French lands being seized by King Philip II of France. Landowner dissatisfaction with this loss as well as with John's despotic rule led to the sealing of the Magna Carta.

A fictional personification of English character originating in a series of pamphlets by John Arbuthnot that later figures in satires, caricatures, and cartoons.

Believed to have authored the biblical book of Revelation while in exile on the island of Patmos, Saint John is by some also regarded as the same apostle of Jesus credited with the gospel of John.

Within the span of her short life, Maria Jewsbury's work included poetry, fiction, satire, reflective essays, and literary criticism. Upon her mother's death, Jewsbury assumed responsibility for her six siblings at the age of 19, a role she filled for over 12 years, during which time she published in The Manchester Gazette, The Athenaeum, and a number of gift annuals. She anonymously published Phantasmagoria; or, Sketches of Life and Literature, (1825) a collection dedicated to William Wordsworth, which he praised.

Character in Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740-1).

Character in Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740-1).

Robert Jephson was an Irish politician and dramatist. His most notable works include his tragedy Braganza (1775), The Conspiracy (1796), Julia (1797), The Law of Lombardy (1779), and The Count of Narbonne (1781). Jephson also published The Confessions of Jacques Baptiste Couteau, a satire on the excesses of the French Revolution.

Called to the bar in 1668, Jeffreys rose to prominence through vigorous activity and astute cultivation of business and political contacts. As recorder of London and later Chief Justice of Chester, his royalist sympathies were apparent in his decisions and opinions, and Charles II made him a baronet in 1681. In 1683 he was appointed to the king's bench, where he presided over some of the proceedings consequent on the Rye House plot to assassinate Charles II as well as a large number of prosecutions for seditious libel.

Minimally successful in the legal profession for which he was trained, Jeffrey found his calling in 1802 when he and a few of his friends founded the Edinburgh Review, with Jeffrey taking over as editor in 1803. Though Jeffrey often expressed literary views vigorously unsympathetic to the Romantic authors of his day, espousing judgments that have not stood the test of time, he remains a major figure in the history of literary criticism, journalism, and the development of the modern periodical.

Known in English as John the Blind or John of Luxembourg, Jan Lucemburský was King of Bohemia from 1310 to his death in 1346 at the Battle of Crécy during the Hundred Years' War.