MICHAEL IRWIN is Professor of English at the University of Kent, which he first joined as lecturer in 1967. He had previously worked at the Catholic University of Lublin, at the University of Tokyo, at the University of Lódz and at Smith College. His chief academic interest has been in fiction, and particularly in matters of fictional technique. His work in this area includes Henry Fielding: the Tentative Realist and Picturing: Description and Illusion in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. For many years he has taught at Kent a specialized course on the work of Thomas Hardy. He has published two novels, Working Orders and Striker, and has translated numerous opera libretti - usually for Kent Opera in the first instance - and a variety of lieder and cabaret songs.
