NICHOLAS BIRNS is an adjunct instructor at NYU, has taught at several other institutions in the New York area, and has lectured abroad in Sweden, Australia, and China. He covers classic and contemporary fiction as well as the major works of Western and world literature, on which he has written many books and articles, most recently co-editing The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel (Cambridge University Press) and authoring The Hyperlocal In Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Literary Space (Lexington). He has contributed to The New York Times Book Review, Modernism/Modernity, Modern Language Quarterly, Partial Answers, and Studies in Romanticism.