JANET BEER is Pro Vice Chancellor and Dean of Humanities, Law and Social Science at the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. She has lectured and published extensively on late nineteenth/early twentieth century American women's writing, and is currently working on a book, in collaboration with Avril Horner, on the figure of the older woman in Edith Wharton's fiction (to be published ... Read moreby Palgrave Macmillan in 2006). Her other publications include Special Relationships: Anglo-American Affinities and Antagonisms, 1854-1936 (co-edited with Bridget Bennett, 2002), American Feminism: Key Source Documents,1848-1920 (editor, 2002), and Edith Wharton (2001). Show Less