The Author: Michael Cotsell received his Ph.D. in literature (Victorian studies) from Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, England. He taught in Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland before joining the University of Delaware's English Department in 1989. His research is primarily concerned with the relations of trauma and culture, particularly with reference to American and postcolonial literatures. Dr. Cotsell was Associate Editor of The Dickens Companions series and General Editor of the English Literature and the Wider World series. He is the author of The Companion to «Our Mutual Friend» and Barbara Pym and editor of Our Mutual Friend in The World's Classics series. He has published and delivered papers on a wide variety of topics from Charles Dickens, John Henry Newman, and Victorian masculinity to David Mamet, Sam Shepard, and semiotics and trauma.