Lucy Maud Montgomery was born on Prince Edward Island, Canada, in 1874. Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908, was her first novel and has remained in print across the world ever since. Montgomery died in Toronto in 1942.

Lyman Frank Baum, born May 15 1856, was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four "lost" novels, 83 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts, and many miscellaneous writings), and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen.

His works anticipated such century-later commonplaces as television, augmented reality, laptop computers (The Master Key), wireless telephones (Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (Mary Louise in the Country), and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work).

On May 5, 1919, Baum suffered from a stroke. He died quietly the next day, nine days short of his 63rd birthday.His final Oz book, Glinda of Oz, was published on July 10, 1920, a year after his death. The Oz series was continued long after his death by other authors, notably Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote an additional nineteen Oz books.

Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year.

They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote the two Jungle Books and Captains Courageous.

He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.

Carlo Collodi (1826–1890) was the pen name of Carlo Lorenzini. The Florence native took the name of his mother's native village, where he attended school.

Collodi served in the Tuscan army during the Italian wars of independence and founded a satirical weekly, Il Lampione.

The author of novels, plays, and political sketches, he translated Charles Perrault's fairy tales from the French, and in 1881 his Storia di un burratino (Story of a Puppet) was published in installments in the Giornale per i bambini, appearing two years later in book form as The Adventures of Pinocchio.

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Manchester in 1849 and moved to America in 1865, where she launched a literary career in which she produced over forty books including A Little Princess (1905) and The Secret Garden (1911). Frances died in 1924.

Kenneth Grahame was born in 1859 and wrote fiction and fantasy for children.

He is most famous for The Wind in the Willows (1908), which is considered to be one of the greatest classics of children's literature.

He also wrote The Reluctant Dragon which was later adapted to a Disney movie.

Anna Sewell was born in 1820 and lived with her family in Norfolk and then in a village on the outskirts of London. At the age of fourteen Anna injured her ankles in a fall, and was severely disabled for the rest of her life.

She had to travel everywhere in horse-drawn carriages, and so Anna was always concerned with the treatment of the animals she so relied upon.

She wrote Black Beauty in order to convince a wide audience of the importance of the humane treatment of animals. It is her only novel, and Anna Sewell died shortly after it's publication, little guessing how well-known and widely loved her story would become.

Edith Nesbit was an English author and poet who was born in 1858.

As well as writing for children, she wrote poems, plays and was also a political activist and co-founded the Fabian Society.

Her most famous works are The Railway Children and Five Children and It.

Jack London (1876 - 1916), lived a life rather like one of his adventure stories. He was born John Chaney, the son of a travelling Irish-American fortune-teller and Flora Wellman, the outcast of a rich family. By the time Jack was a year old, Flora had married a grocer called John London and settled into a life of poverty in Pennsylvania. As Jack grew up he managed to escape from his grim surroundings into books borrowed from the local library - his reading was guided by the librarian.

At fifteen Jack left home and travelled around North America as a tramp - he was once sent to prison for thirty days on a charge of vagrancy. At nineteen he could drink and curse as well as any boatman in California! He never lost his love of reading and even returned to education and gained entry into the University of California. He soon moved on and in 1896 joined the gold rush to the Klondyke in north-west Canada. He returned without gold but with a story in his head that became a huge best-seller - The Call of the Wild - and by 1913 he was the highest -paid and most widely read writer in the world. He spent all his money on his friends, on drink and on building himself a castle-like house which was destroyed by fire before it was finished. Financial difficulties led to more pressure than he could cope with and in 1916, at the age of forty, Jack London committed suicide.

Titles such as The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf and White Fang continue to excite readers today.