James Kenneth Ridley (1736–1765) was an English author educated atUniversity College, Oxford. He served as a chaplain with the British Army. He is best known for a volume of imitation Orientalia.

Ridley wrote two novels:The History of James Lovegrove, Esquire (1761) andThe Schemer, or the Universal Satirist, by that Great Philosopher Helter van Scelter (1763). However, he is mainly remembered for hisOriental pasticheThe Tales of the Genii, a set of stories based on those of theArabian Nights. That work, published in two volumes in1764, was issued under the pseudonym "Sir Charles Morell", supposedly British Ambassador at Bombay.

Ridley'sTales were allegedly composed by animam named Horam and translated from a Persian manuscript, but in actuality, they were products of Ridley's imagination. They belong to a genre of imitation, Orientalia, popular in the 18th century. In its own time and after, Ridley's book was compared toSamuel Johnson'sRasselas. It retained its popularity and had gone through seven editions by 1861. Translations into German and French also appeared.

• "Ridley, James" .Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
• Backscheider, Paula R., and Catherine Ingrassia, eds.A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture. London, Blackwell, 2005
• Ballaster, Rosalind.Fables of the East: Selected Tales 1662–1785. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005

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