Christoph Irmscher is Provost Professor of English at Indiana University Bloomington and George
F. Getz Jr. Professor in the Wells Scholars Program, which he also directs. Among his books
are The Poetics of Natural History, Longfellow Redux, Private Poet, Public Man, and Louis
Agassiz: Creator of American Science. He is the editor of the Library of America edition of John
James Audubon's Writings and Drawings and of a new biography of Max Eastman, forthcoming
from Yale University Press.

Rosamond Purcell is a photographer known for her work in natural history collections and for
the recreation of the seventeenth century Danish museum of Ole Worm. Her books include Egg
& Nest, Bookworm, and Dice: Deception, Fate and Rotten Luck with Ricky Jay. She is the author
of Owls Head: On the Nature of Lost Things, a biography of a junkyard.