James Bell Salmond, better known as J. B. Salmond, was a Scottish journalist, poet and novelist. During the First World War he wrote poetry and, with Wilfred Owen, was for a time joint editor of The Hydra, a journal published within Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Edinburgh. He obtained a degree in Political Economy from the University of St Andrews in 1913. After working as a journalist with Northcliffe Press, he joined the Inns of Court Regiment, a territorial unit, at the beginning of the First World War, and was soon commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant.