John Jenkins Espey (15 January 1913 – 26 September 2000) was a novelist, memoirist and literary scholar, born in Shanghai where his parents were Presbyterian missionaries. Espey returned to the United States to study at Occidental College in 1930, then went to Merton College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar in 1935.[1] In 1938, he became a member of the faculty at his alma mater, then taught in the English Department at UCLA from 1948 until his death.[1][2]