Michael Seidel is Jesse and George Siegel Professor of Humanities at Columbia University. He has written widely on narrative form and his previous publications include "Epic Geography: James Joyce's Ulysses" (1976), "Exile and the Narrative Imagination" (1986), and "Robinson Crusoe: Island Myths and the Novel" (1991). He is associate editor of the "Columbia History of British Fiction" and co-editor of the first two volumes of "The Complete Works of Daniel Defoe" (2000, 2001). He also serves on the editorial board of "The James Joyce Studies Annual."