Cedric Watts is a professor in the English Department at the University of Sussex, and the internationally-renowned author of fifteen critical and scholarly books, including The Deceptive Text; A Preface to Keats; Joseph Conrad: A Literary Life; Literature and Money; and Thomas Hardy: "Jude the Obscure." As well as being editor of this Broadview edition of Jude the Obscure, he is the editor of Broadview's edition of Conrad's Lord Jim.