Jean Lee Latham (April 19, 1902 – June 13, 1995) was an American writer who specialized in biographies for children or young adults.

[citation needed] She attended West Virginia Wesleyan College and received an A.B.

[2] During World War II Latham trained inspectors for the United States Signal Corps.

[4] WorldCat reports that 12 of her 13 books most widely held in participating libraries are biographies of Bowditch (fictionalized), Eli Whitney, Samuel Morse, Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Blackwell, Francis Drake, Cyrus W. Field, Sam Houston (two, one brief and one fictionalized), David Farragut, John Ericsson, and James Cook.

The other, This dear-bought land (1957), features "a fifteen-year-old boy [who] joins the expeditionary force that hopes to establish a permanent English colony in Virginia.