Specializing in Victorian literature and Contemporary American fiction, her work has been published in journals such as Critique, Brontë Studies, The Explicator, Journal of Narrative Theory,and Modern Fiction Studies. This essay forms part of a book-length project on gender and national identity in mid-nineteenth century fiction. Associate Professor of English at University of Nevada Las Vegas, Kelly J. Mays is co-author (with Alison Booth) of The Norton Introduction to Literature (9th ed., 2005) and has published work on nineteenth-century British reading and publishing practices, as well as working-class and Chartist autobiography and poetry.