John Frederick Lehmann (born Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, June 2 1907; died London, April 7 1987) was an English poet and man of letters, and one of the foremost literary editors of the twentieth century, founding the periodicals New Writing and The London Magazine .

The son of journalist Rudolph Lehmann, and brother of actress Beatrix Lehmann and novelist Rosamond Lehmann , he was educated at Eton and read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, his time at both of which he considered "lost years". After a spell as a journalist in Vienna, he returned to England to found the popular periodical in book format, New Writing (1936-1941) which proved of great influence on literature of the period, and an outlet for writers such as Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden.

After joining Leonard and Virginia Woolf as managing director of Hogarth Press between 1938 and 1946 he created his own firm John Lehmann Ltd with his sister Rosamond, publishing new works by authors such as Sartre and Stendhal, and discovering talents like Thom Gunn and Laurie Lee.

In 1954 he founded The London Magazine, remaining as editor until 1961, following which he was a frequent lecturer, and completed his three volume autobiography, Whispering Gallery (1955), I Am My Brother (1960), The Ample Proposition (1966). He also wrote the biographies Edith Sitwell (1952), Virginia Woolf and Her World (1975), Thrown To The Woolfs (1978) and Rupert Brooke (1980).

Poets in Poems from New Writing 1936-1946 (1946)

Walter Allen - Georg Anders - Louis Aragon - Theresa Ashton - Robin Atthill - W. H. Auden - Donald Bain - George Barker - Joan Barton - Earle Birney - Charles Brasch - Vwadiswav Bronievski - J. Bronowski - Jocelyn Brooke - Anthony Brown - Harry Brown - Norman Cameron - Demetrios Capetanakis - André Chamson - Alex Comfort - John Cornford - Maurice James Craig - Allen Curnow - R. N. Currey - Clifford Dyment - Odysseus Elytis - Roy Fuller - David Gascoyne - Robert Graves - Bernard Gutteridge - Norman Hampson - Arthur Harvey - John Heath-Stubbs - Hamish Henderson - Peter Hewett - Gillian Hughes - Pierre Jean Jouve - Laurie Lee - John Lehmann - Alun Lewis - C. Day Lewis - Lawrence Little - Federico Garcia Lorca - David Luke - Louis MacNeice - H. B. Mallalieu - Ewart Milne - Nicholas Moore - Vitĕslav Nezval - William Plomer - Pantelis Prevelakis - F. T. Prince - Henry Reed - Anne Ridler - Michael Riviere - Alan Ross - May Sarton - George Seferis - Jaroslav Seifert - Edith Sitwell - Stephen Spender - W. F. M. Stewart - Randall Swingler - A. S. J. Tessimond - Dunstan Thompson - Terence Tiller - Robert Waller - Diana Witherby - L. J. Yates - Peter Yates