Albert D. Pionke is the William and Margaret Going Endowed Professor of English at the University of Alabama, USA. He is the author of Plots of Opportunity: Representing Conspiracy in Victorian England (2004) and The Ritual Culture of Victorian Professionals: Competing for Ceremonial Status, 18381877 (2013), co-editor of Victorian Secrecy: Economies of Knowledge and Concealment (2010) and Thomas Carlyle and the Idea of Influence (2018), and principal investigator for Mill Marginalia Online.