G. Douglas Atkins is a Professor of English at the University of Kansas, USA. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books, including Reading T.S. Eliot: 'Four Quartets' and the Journey Towards Understanding; T.S. Eliot and the Essay; On the Familiar Essay; Challenging Academic Orthodoxies; Literary Paths to Religious Understanding: Essays on Dryden, Pope, Keats, George Eliot, Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and E.B. White; and Swift's Satires on Modernism. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including NEH, the Mellon Foundation, and American Council of Learned Societies; has received several awards for teaching; and was the winner of the Kenyon Review's prize for literary excellence in nonfiction prose.