Fred Kaplan is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of several biographies, including The Singular Mark Twain, Gore Vidal, Henry James, The Imagination of Genius, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Carlyle, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Boothbay, Maine.