Valerie Lester is the author of Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World, the biography of Giambattista Bodoni (Godine, Spring 2014). She is also the author of Phiz, the Man Who Drew Dickens (Chatto & Windus, 2004), a biography of her great-great- grandfather, Hablot Knight Browne, Dickens's principal illustrator; and Fasten Your Seat Belts! History and Heroism in the Pan Am Cabin (Paladwr Press, 1995), which is a history of Pan American World Airways told from the point of view of its cabin crew. Her translation of Le Grand Meaulnes (The Magnificent Meaulnes) was published by Vintage Press in 2009.