Deirdre David is Professor Emerita of English at Temple University. Throughout her long career she has taught courses in Victorian literature, the history of the British novel, and women's writing. She has published books dealing with social problems in the Victorian novel (Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels, 1981), the conflicted position of the woman intellectual in Victorian culture ... Read more(Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy 1987), and the importance of British women in imperialism (Rule Britannia: Women, Empire, and Victorian Writing 1995). She also edited The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel (2001), and co-edited (with Eileen Gillooly) Contemporary Dickens (2009). She published her first biography in 2007 (Fanny Kemble: A Performed Life) and continues to teach as a member of the Society of Senior Scholars at Columbia University. Show Less