Joseph Alexander Altsheler (April 29, 1862 - June 5, 1919) was an American newspaper reporter, editor and author of popular juvenile historical fiction. He was a prolific writer, and produced fifty novels and at least fifty-three short stories. Altsheler was born in Three Springs, Hart County, Kentucky, to Joseph and Louise (née Snoddy) Altsheler. He attended Liberty College in Glasgow, Kentucky, before entering Vanderbilt University. In 1885, he took a job at the Louisville Courier-Journal as a reporter and later worked as an editor. He started working for the New York World in 1892, first as the paper's Hawaiian correspondent and then as the editor of the World's tri-weekly magazine. Due to a lack of suitable stories, he began writing children's stories for the magazine.

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life (1788-1805), Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with the already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of short satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical vision.