Halszka Leleń is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland, where she teaches British literature. She has published articles and book chapters on H. G. Wells, Thomas Hardy, Stefan Themerson, Bertrand Russell, and on the theory of fantastic fiction. Her current research focuses on semiotic and narrative aspects of storytelling, short story, regional fiction, spatial motifs and axiology in literature. She has also presented several papers on the Orkney writer George Mackay Brown. Her book H. G. Wells: The Literary Traveller in His Short Story Machine is due to be published early in 2016 by Peter Lang in the series Mediated Fictions