John Major (1782 – 9 January 1849) was an English publisher and bookseller, responsible for many books including illustrated editions of The Compleat Angler.
He started his bookselling and publishing business in a small shop in the gateway of St Bartholomew's Hospital, London.
He also published editions of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress complete with a biography of Bunyan by Robert Southey (1830) and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, for which book he wrote a preface wishing "the reader a good appetite for, and a healthy digestion of, the banquet here provided".
[1][2] Major's business affairs were never well managed, and he allowed himself to become dangerously involved in speculative ventures with a bibliographer named Thomas Frognall Dibdin.
[3] This eventually led, after many changes of address, to bankruptcy, and he "obtained an asylum in the Charterhouse", where he died.