John Richardson (4 October 1796 – 12 May 1852) was a Canadian officer in the British Army who became the first Canadian-born novelist to achieve international recognition.

While stationed at Fort Malden during the War of 1812, Richardson witnessed the execution of an American prisoner by Tecumseh's forces at the River Raisin, a traumatic experience which haunted him for the rest of his life.

Richardson stated that his mixed racial background made him uneasy with his fellow officers in the West Indies.

Although Richardson's most savage characters, Wacousta in the novel Wacousta (1832) and Desborough in The Canadian Brothers (1840), are in fact white men who have turned "savage," his depiction of other Indigenous characters typically affirms a European settler perspective that envisions Indigenous people as pre-modern, irrational, and innately warlike.

David Beasley has identified him as the anonymous author of The Roué; or The Hazards of Women, The Oxonians: A Glance at Society, and Écarté; or the Salons of Paris.

In 1838, after fighting with the British during the Spanish First Carlist War, Richardson returned to Canada from England, promoted to the rank of major.