Swedenborg and His Readers by John Chadwick is a collection of essays that addresses the problems of translation and the bridging of the cultural and historical divide between readers of today and texts written in centuries past. The essays focus on Chadwick’s groundbreaking work as a translator of Swedish philosopher and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), but many of the issues raised are applicable to the broader study of language beyond that. This volume is the first in the Journal of the Swedenborg Society series. It contains five essays by John Chadwick entitled:
 
• “Swedenborg and His Readers”
• “On Translating The True Christian Religion”
• “On Conjugial Love”
• “On The Worlds in Space”
• “The Translator and the Latin Text”
 
Also included in the volume are “A Personal Tribute to John Chadwick” by G. P. Dawson; an introduction by Stephen McNeilly, a bibliography, and an index.

Dr. John Chadwick was a classical scholar who served as an editor on the Oxford Latin Dictionary and who is internationally renowned for his contribution to the decipherment of the ancient Minoan script, Linear B. He was also a fellow of the British Academy and of Downing College, Cambridge. By the time of his retirement in 1984, he had become the fourth (and last) Perceval Maitland Laurence Reader in Classics at Cambridge. With Michael Ventris he published Documents in Mycenaean Greek (1956) and "Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives" in The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1956). He also wrote The Decipherment of Linear B (1958) and The Mycenaean World (1976). For the Swedenborg Society he translated six of Swedenborg’s works, including The True Christian Religion and The Last Judgment.
 
Stephen McNeilly is the director of the Swedenborg Society and series editor of the Journal of the Swedenborg Society and the Swedenborg Archive imprint. For the Society he has published numerous volumes, including An Angel Speaks with Homero Aridjis and J. M. G. Le Clézio; Philosophy, Literature, Mysticism: An Anthology of Essays with Czeslaw Milosz et al.; Swimming to Heaven: the Lost Rivers of London with Iain Sinclair; Blake’s London: The Topographic Sublime with Iain Sinclair; and Several Clouds Colliding with Brian Catling and Iain Sinclair. He is also a visiting lecturer in art, philosophy and critical theory at several universities in the United Kingdom.