This summer, Professor Douglas Mao became senior editor of ELH, the renowned journal of literary criticism that has issued from the Johns Hopkins English Department since 1934. Professor Mao looks forward to continuing the ELH tradition of publishing first-rate scholarship on literatures in English from all periods and without restriction as to methodology or theoretical approach. He also looks forward to extending a newer tradition at ELH: that of publishing, in the summer number, a group of papers based on presentations given at the prestigious English Institute.