William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College. His publications include a monograph on American literary and cultural criticism, 1900-1945, in The Cambridge History of American Literature, Volume Five. He is a coeditor of The Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (Second Edition,2010), and, with Sylvan Barnet, he has coauthored a number of books on literature and composition. Recently he has written essays on George Orwell, Edith Wharton, Ralph Ellison, Shakespeare, and Mark Rothko.