Richard Kelly, a native New Yorker, was a graduate student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, when he became a devoted fan of The Andy Griffith Show. Dr. Kelly wemt on to become an professor emeritus of English at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. His specialty is 19th-century English literature and he has written biographies of Douglas Jerrold, Lewis Carroll, George Du Maurier, and Graham Greene. In 1975, Dr. Kelly decided to depart from his Victorian humor to write a critical study of his favorite television show. In 1981, The Andy Griffith Show was first published.
