Professor DeVries is a leading scholar and the internationally noted bibliographer of Dickens. He is a retired Associate Professor of English from Polytechnic Institute of New York University, where he served as Head of the Department of Humanities and Communications. He has edited Bleak House for the Crowell Critical Library (1971); and served as editor of Dickens Studies Newsletter; as associate general editor of the Gale Information Guides to American Literature, English Literature, and World Literatures in English, a 42-volume biographical series; as general editor of The Garland Dickens Bibliographies (11 volumes) and its replacement The Dickens Bibliographies (AMS Press) He has most recently, published the first two volumes of General Studies of Charles Dickens: An Annotated Bibliography (AMS Press, 2004, 2010).