Thomas Cooley (PhD, Indiana University) is emeritus professor of English at The Ohio State University. In addition to Back to the Lake , he is the editor of The Norton Sampler and 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 .