Gary Scharnhorst is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, editor of American Literary Realism, editor in alternating years of American Literary Scholarship, and general editor of the "Studies in American Literary Realism and Naturalism" monograph series issued by the University of Alabama Press. A former chair of the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association and former president of the Western Literature Association, he is also the co-author, with Jack Bales, of The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. (1985).