Ruthven Campbell Todd (pronounced 'riven') (14 June 1914 – 11 October 1978) was a Scottish poet, artist and novelist, best known as an editor of the works of William Blake, and expert on his printing techniques.

His short spell at art college convinced him that he had no creative talent as an artist and he thereafter pursued his ambition to become a poet and writer.

He lived in a variety of types of accommodation in central London until the flat he was renting in Bloomsbury was hit by a flying bomb in 1944.

He then moved to Tilty Mill House near Dunmow in Essex (later rented to poet and novelist Elizabeth Smart).

During the 1930s, he had become friendly with Dylan Thomas, Louis MacNeice, Geoffrey Grigson,[6] Norman Cameron, David Gascoyne[7] and Len Lye.

He was secretary to the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition, during which he was memorably required to rescue Salvador Dalí from suffocating inside a heavy diving suit.

[3] In 1954 he moved to live on the island of Martha's Vineyard where he began to write children's fiction, with the launch of the Space Cat series.

During the 1970s he visited the US on a number of occasions to give lecture courses on Creative Writing and William Blake at the Universities of Buffalo and Maryland.

While living in New York in 1949, Todd was briefly and unsuccessfully married to Paula Norworth, before a third marriage to the artist and sculptor Joellen Hall in 1952.