A History of the Swedenborg Society tells the story of the Society's growth from a local to a worldwide membership; its move from the drawing rooms of members' houses to its famous grade-II listed headquarters in the heart of literary Bloomsbury. Richard Lines was educated at Oxford University and was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn. He became Secretary of the Swedenborg Society in 2002, having previously served on its governing Council for nearly eighteen years. He was President of the Society from 1991 to 1994. He has published numerous articles on Swedenborg, his influence on nineteenth-century literature and on early Swedenborgians, including biographical essays about Charles Augustus Tulk and James John Garth Wilkinson. He has contributed to the Journal of the Swedenborg Society. He has given papers at academic conferences at the universities of Oxford and York, University College London, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.