James Walvin is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of York U.K. where he taught for many years. He has published widely on the history of slavery, and on modern British social history. Among his recent books are The Slave Trade, (Thames and Hudson, London, 2011) andThe Zong. A Massacre, the Law, and the End of Slavery, (Yale University Press, 2011.) At the Beinecke he plans to continue his work on the slave trade by exploring the manuscript and printed collections relating to the slave trade in the South Atlantic in the nineteenth century.