Joad Raymond

Joad Raymond is a Welsh writer and scholar, now based in London and Folkestone. He was educated at the University of East Anglia and Oxford University, and taught at the Universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, East Anglia, Queen Mary, University of London.

He has written about early modern Europe: about cheap print and news, angels, the role of the imagination in political thought, and the capacity of utopia to carry us beyond the horizons of our own thinking. Among the dozen books of which he is the author and editor are: NEWS NETWORKS IN EARLY-MODERN EUROPE (Brill, 2016), THE INVENTION OF THE NEWSPAPER: ENGLISH NEWSBOOKS, 1641-1649 (Oxford, 1996; 2005), PAMPHLETS AND PAMPHLETEERING IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN (Cambridge, 2003); MILTON’S ANGELS: THE EARLY-MODERN IMAGINATION (Oxford, 2010); and (ed.) THE OXFORD HISTORY OF POPULAR PRINT CULTURE, vol. 1: CHEAP PRINT IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND TO 1660 (Oxford, 2011). Some of these won prizes. His edition of Milton's Latin Prose for Oxford’s THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN MILTON, vol. 7: THE LATIN DEFENCES, will appear one day under the general editorship of Thomas N. Corns and Gordon Campbell. For this he hopes to be rewarded in Heaven. THE NEWS IN EUROPE, 1400–1800 will be published by Penguin books in 2024.

He intermittently contributes to TV and radio documentaries, talking about the history of printing, seventeenth-century print culture, seventeenth-century women, news and pamphlets. He has written for the Guardian, the TLS, the LRB, the TES, History Today, BBC History and other journals.

His non-academic interests are mainly parenting, running marathons, making and looking at art and making and listening to music. Under the name ‘The Unattached’ – a collaborative project with more accomplished musicians – he writes and performs avant-folk music. Their next album, REQUIEM FOR DEAD DOGS, will be released by Gare du Nord in 2023.

His next book will be a study of utopias throughout history and literature, UTOPIA: A TRAVELLER’S GUIDE.