Thomas Recchio is Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He is an advising editor of the Encyclopedia of British Writers: 19th Century and of the Encyclopedia of British Writers: 20th Century. His articles on the Victorian novel have appeared in Dickens Studies Annual, Victorian Studies, the Gaskell Society Journal, and Studies in English Literature, among others. His current work, The Cultural Uses of Cranford, examines the various cultural uses that Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel has found since its publication in 1853.