Acknowledgments
It is of course impossible to thank all of those people who have had some hand in shaping the BioText. Financially, I have been fortunate for the assistance of two Faculty Research Grants from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the project began in earnest--though I did not know it at the time--during Paula Backscheider's 1994 Summer Seminar in London sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. From that point until the present, I have been in debt to dozens of librarians, archivists, students, web gurus, colleagues and friends. I would like especially to thank those friends who have had the most direct influence on the work: Lee Person, whose support and enthusiasm have helped more than he knows, Juanita Sizemore, whose administrative and secretarial wizardry makes it possible for ordinary faculty members to attend to projects like the BioText, and Anne Nicol, whose care in proofreading has saved a number of troubled passages from finding their way into cyberspace.
Most especially, I would like to thank Tara Brown, without whose generosity, skill, and diligence in research, the BioText quite simply would not exist.
And finally, thanks are due to Deanna Calvert, my friend and companion, whose suggestions and patience have helped shape the BioText project, and to whom the work is dedicated.
