This dictionary is the most comprehensive work of reference on the ship portraitists and marine artists who worked in Liverpool between the late eighteenth century and the present day. It includes 65 known portraitists and marine artists and an appendix of over a dozen other locally-based painters who produced an occasional marine work and about half a dozen possible marine artists who may have worked, visited or have been temporarily resident in the port. It is organised alphabetically by surname. Each entry includes a full biography of the artist; a summary of their main subjects, style and range of work; details of the main UK and US museums holding their paintings; and the principal published sources. The dictionary includes 70 illustrations which are typical examples of the work of each of the main artists. These included: Samuel and Miles Walters, Joseph Heard, Robert Salmon, Francis Hustwick, William Jackson, John Jenkinson, Sam Brown, Odin Rosenvinge, Thomas Dove, William G Yorke and William H Yorke.

Newly available in paperback, this edition is an important volume of international significance, drawing together contributions from some of the leading scholars in the field and edited by a team headed by the acclaimed historian David Richardson. The book sets Liverpool in the wider context of transatlantic slavery and addresses issues in the scholarship of transatlantic slavery, including African agency and trade experience. Emphasis is placed on the human characteristics and impacts of transatlantic slavery. It also opens up new areas of debate on Liverpool's participation in the slave trade and helps to frame the research agenda for the future.

During the course of more than four centuries, merchants in Liverpool were responsible for forcibly transporting over a million and a half Africans across the Atlantic to work as enslaved labourers on the plantations of the Caribbean as their ships carried a larger number of Africans than those of any other European port. White colonial owners used the enslaved Africans to produce sugar and other valuable tropical goods which were consumed at home in Britain. Liverpool and the slave trade is the first comprehensive account of the city's participation in the trade. It tells the story of the merchants and ships' captains who organised the trade and shows how they bought and sold Africans, how they treated the enslaved during the Atlantic voyage and how they and the wider community benefitted from the slave trade. It concludes with the efforts to end the trade and the legacy it has left in Liverpool and beyond. Drawing on the most recent research as well as extensive use of contemporary documents and personal testimonies and experiences to explore this history, Liverpool and the slave trade highlights an important part of the city's history which has for too long been rejected, forgotten or ignored.