beyond my gratitude to Luciana O’Flaherty and Kizzy Taylor-Richelieu at OUP for their usual support, skill, and professionalism, I must add a special thank you for their patience during the pandemic which dragged out the completion of this project for so long. Thanks as well to everyone else at OUP and Straive who worked on the book, including Nico Parfitt, Charles Lauder, Cheryl Brant, and Peter Gibbs. While I am attributing malignant agency to Covid, I will blame it also for any omissions in the following list of scholars, writers, and anthologists who helped me in some way (and in some cases with a significantly different conception of the book in mind) during the research process: Martha Vicinus, Franco Fabbri, Linda Hughes, Dennis Denisoff, Christa Zorn, Ana Parejo Vadillo, Mary Clai Jones, Darryl Jones, Jim Rockhill, Doug Anderson, Ioanna Iordanou, Don Cruickshank, Carolyn Burdett, Anita Savo, Jim Iffland, Benjamin Morgan, Mike Ashley, Jess Nevins, Otto Penzler, the staff of Godington House (the original of ‘Okehurst’) in Ashford, Kent, Jonah Siegel, Roger Luckhurst, Rosemary Pardoe, Marion Thain, Catherine Maxwell, Diana Maltz, Jonathan Foltz, Joe Bristow, Jill Ehnenn, Kristen Mahoney, Lindsay Wilhelm, Elizabeth Greeniaus, Patricia Pulham, and, last but very far from least, Sophie Geoffroy and Mandy Gagel, whose ongoing work of annotating and publishing Lee’s letters is an incredible gift to all Lee scholars.