Richard Simpson (16 September 1820–5 April 1876) was a British Roman Catholic writer and literary scholar.
He was born at Beddington, Surrey, into an Anglican family, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and at Oriel College, Oxford.
He was ordained in the Church of England, and became the vicar of Mitcham in Surrey, in 1844, the same year that he married his cousin, Elizabeth Mary Cranmer.
When the magazine was discontinued in 1862 Simpson, with Sir John Acton, began the Home and Foreign Review.
Simpson's Edmund Campion was revised, edited and enlarged by Fr Peter Joseph in 2010.