John Young Thomson Greig (1891–1963) was a British literary scholar and award-winning biographer. He was born in Manchuria where his father was a Presbyterian missionary.^[1] He served in the First World War as an officer in the Northumberland Fusiliers. After the war, he studied at the University of Glasgow, receiving his MA in 1913, and a DLitt in 1924. Till 1931 he was on the staff of Armstrong College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1932, he moved to the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa where he succeeded Professor Max Drennan as chair of the English Department.^[1]

Greig was a leading scholar on the Scottish philosopher David Hume. His 1931 biography of Hume won the James Tait Black Award and he also edited Hume's letters. He also published a well-regarded biography of WM Thackeray in 1950, and a volume entitled The Psychology of Laughter and Comedy. In addition, Greig wrote four novels under the pseudonym of John Carruthers during the 1920s.