Janet Ravenscroft
Writer, editor, academic
BACKGROUND
Skills
Publishing​​
Publishing
​1985 - 2010
I trained as a journalist but decided that this career was not for me when the only options available were covering council meetings for the local press, waxing lyrical about lipstick for a woman's mag, or working for a trade magazine, such as The Pig Breeders' Gazette.
Eventually I found my way into publishing, and spent the next two decades commissioning and editing illustrated books on non-fiction subjects such as gardening, home decor and crafts for the likes of Little, Brown, Headline and the packager, Breslich & Foss.
It was while working in publishing that I studied for my degrees in English and History at Birkbeck College, the University of London's only specialist provider of evening education.
* Marketing and sales for the book trade
* Writing fiction as Jan Ellis
* Academic writing and speaking
* Editor and author of non-fiction for books and magazines
Languages
* French (fluent)
* Spanish (pretty good)
* Italian (great when I'm there)
Education
Birkbeck College, University of London
​1984 - 2010
Ten years after studying for a BA in English Literature at Birkbeck College,
I returned to take an MA in Renaissance Studies and, later, a PhD in Early Modern Spanish Art and Culture. My thesis was entitled ‘Invisible friends: questioning the representation of the court dwarf in Hapsburg Spain’.
Academia
Academic writing
My most recent piece of academic writing was 'Ordinary Marvels: the Case of Dwarf Attendants in Habsburg Spain' in the collection Giants and Dwarfs in European Art and Culture, ca. 1350-1700: Real, Imagined, Metaphorical. (Amsterdam University Press, 2024).
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Previous contributions include 'Dwarfs and Kings at the Spanish Hapsburg Court: Images and Living Bodies' in Dis/ability History der Vormoderne, Ein Handbuch/ Premodern Dis/ability History, A Companion (Didymos-Verlag, Affalterbach 2017) compiled by the Homo-Debilis research group, of which I am a member.
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I also have a chapter entitled 'Dwarfs – and a "Loca" – as Ladies’ Maids at the Spanish Habsburg Courts' in The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting across early modern Europe (Brill, 2013).
An edited version of my MA dissertation was published as ‘Invisible friends: questioning the representation of the court dwarf in Hapsburg Spain’ in Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal: Social and cultural histories of norms and normativity, ed by Waltraud Ernst (part of the series Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine) (Oxford: Routledge, 2006; first paperback edition 2012).
As well as academic texts, I have also contributed reviews and articles for the best-selling History Today magazine. (See 'Projects' for other work.)
Lecturing
I have spoken widely about the Spanish court dwarfs and issues around early modern conceptualisations of dis/ability at conferences in the UK and the US. I also give occasional talks on subjects as varied as 'monsters and marvels' and childhood to general-interest groups.
Teaching
I have taught short courses on the art and culture of early modern Spain and the Low Countries for adult learners and been a guest lecturer at Birkbeck for the Golden Age Spain module of the MA in Renaissance Studies, which I enjoyed very much.
Sales and marketing
Sales, marketing and editorial roles
​2010 - present
I handle sales and marketing to booksellers worldwide for Batch, the part of the Booksellers' Association (BA) that moves money and electronic data between bookshops and suppliers as cost-effectively as possible. I have also taken on the management of BatchLine POS, the only stock management system in the industry to be managed solely for the benefit of booksellers. To keep my hand in, I occasionally take on some editorial tasks for a small number of non-fiction publishers. (Contact me for details.)