James Raven is Professor of Modern History, University of Essex, and a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Formerly he was Reader in Social and Cultural History, University of Oxford, and Professorial Fellow of Mansfield College. He is the author, editor and co-editor of numerous books and articles in early modern and modern British, Eu-ropean and colonial history, including Judging New Wealth (1992); London Booksellers and American Customers (2002); Lost Libraries (2004); The Business of Books (2007) ; Books between Europe and the Americas (2011) ; Bookscape: Geographies of Printing and Publishing in London before 1800 (2014); and Publishing Business in Eighteenth-Century England (2014). He is also editor of the forthcoming Oxford Illustrated History of the Book.