Michael Seidel is Jesse and George Siegel Professor of Humanities at Columbia University. He has written widely on narrative form and his previous publications include Epic Geography: James Joyce's Ulysses (1976), Exile and the Narrative Imagination (1986), and Robinson Crusoe: Island Myths and the Novel (1991). He is associate editor of the Columbia History of British Fiction and co-editor of the first two volumes of The Complete Works of Daniel Defoe (2000, 2001). He also serves on the editorial board of The James Joyce Studies Annual.