Henry James was born in New York in 1843 and was educated in Europe and America. He left Harvard Law School in 1863, after a year's attendance, to concentrate on writing, and from 1869 he began to make prolonged visits to Europe, eventually settling in England in 1876.

His literary output was prodigious and of the highest quality: more than ten outstanding novels, including The Portrait of a Lady and The American; countless novellas and short stories; as well as innumerable essays, letters, and other pieces of critical prose. Known by contemporary fellow novelists as 'the Master', James died in Kensington, London, in 1916.

William Wymark Jacobs (1863 1943) was a prolific short-story writer.

Known for his trademark wit even in the horror story 'The Monkey's Paw', for which he is best known Jacobs set most of his stories in the docks of East London, where he lived from a young age, as well as in Essex, where he moved in his middle age.

Dr Robert Stevenson is a consultant historian who served in the Australian Regular Army before joining the staff at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, and later working with the Official History project at the Australian War Memorial. His doctoral thesis was a joint winner of the Australian Army History Unit’s CEW Bean Prize in 2011. His most recent major publication, The War with Germany, was published as part of The Centenary History of Australia and the Great War and was shortlisted for the Australian History Prize in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for 2016.