James Tytler was a Scottish apothecary and the editor of the second edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Tytler became the first person in Britain to fly by ascending in a hot air balloon (1784).
In 1793 he was charged with sedition for publishing a pamphlet championing the Rights of Man, but fled Scotland prior to his trial, travelling first to Belfast, and then in 1795 to the United States. He was outlawed in absentia. In Salem, Massachusetts, he edited the Salem Register, published some works and sold medicine.