John Christian Freund (November 23, 1848 – June 3, 1924) was a British-American magazine publisher, playwright, and music critic.

[2] In 1868 when he was nineteen years old, Freund attended Exeter College, Oxford where he studied music.

[2] The Dark Blue was a literary journal that included essays, illustrations, poems, and stories by Ford Madox Brown, Sydney Colvin, Edward Dowden, W.S.

[4] Also while still at university in 1870, Freund wrote and produced a play, The Undergraduate, at the Queens Theatre in London.

[2] Freund emigrated to the United States in 1871, fleeing his creditors after The Dark Blue went bankrupt.

[4][1] In New York City, he worked for trade papers, writing for The Wine and Spirit Gazette.

[2] In late 1884, Freund became a partner in the fledgling The Journalist, generally considered to be the first successful American trade newspaper covering journalism.

[2] Freund was an investor in The Colored American Magazine, working with Booker T. Washington to control the editorial content and oust editor Pauline Hopkins in 1904.