Edward Mendelson is a professor of English and Comparative Literature and the Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. He is the literary executor of the Estate of W. H. Auden and the author or editor of several books about Auden's work, including Early Auden and Later Auden. He is also the author of a book about nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life. He has edited standard editions of works by W. H. Auden, including Collected Poems, The English Auden, Selected Poems, As I Walked Out One Evening, and the continuing Complete Works of W. H. Auden. His work on Thomas Pynchon includes Pynchon: A Collection of Critical Essays and numerous essays, including "The Sacred, the Profane, and The Crying of Lot 49 and "Gravity's Encyclopedia" 

January 1st, 1946 in New York (Age 78)