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 by 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).