Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was born in 1818 in the province of Oryol. In 1827 he entered St Petersburg University where he studied philosophy. When he was nineteen he published his first poems and went to the University of Berlin.

After two years he returned to Russia and took his degree at the University of Moscow. After 1856 he lived mostly abroad, and he became the first Russian writer to gain a wide reputation in Europe. He wrote many novels, plays, short stories and novellas, of which First Love (1860) is the most famous. He died in Paris in 1883.

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.