Christoph Irmscher is an internationally recognised author and literary critic. He is a Board member of the National Book Critics Circle and a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, as well as a Distinguished Professor at Indiana University Bloomington, where he directs the Wells Scholars Program. He is known especially for 'The Poetics of Natural History' and his biographies of Longfellow, Louis Agassiz, and Max Eastman. A regular contributor to the book section of the Wall Street Journal, he is also the literary executor of the estate of the Harvard Americanist Daniel Aaron and manages a website dedicated to his work and legacy. His current project is a series of autobiographical and biographical sketches, each based on an old family photograph. He is the editor of the Library America volume of Audubon’s writings and drawings and, with Richard King, of 'Audubon at Sea'.