Thomas Cooley (PhD, Indiana University) is professor of English at The Ohio State University. In addition to Back to the Lake, he is the editor of The Norton Sampler, The Norton Critical Edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the author of several other books, among them Educated Lives: The Rise of Modern Autobiography in America and The Ivory Leg in the Ebony Cabinet: Madness, Race, and Gender in Victorian America.