Dr William May is a lecturer in Humanities at the University of Southampton. He completed a doctorate on the work of Stevie Smith at Balliol College, Oxford, and lectured at Bath Spa, Roehampton and St. Anne's College, Oxford, before joining Southampton in 2008. He has published widely on postwar British literature, co-edited the interdisciplinary essay collection From Self to Shelf: The Artist Under Construction (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), and recently published the monograph Stevie Smith and Authorship (OUP, 2010). His current research project, 'Setting Agendas', examines the relationship between contemporary British music and literature.