George William Curtis (1824 -1892) was an American writer and public speaker, born in Providence, Rhode Island, of New Englander ancestry. A Republican, he spoke in favor of African-American equality and civil rights. Curtis returned from Europe in 1850, attractive, accomplished, and ambitious for literary distinction. He settled on Staten Island and instantly plunged into the whirl of life in New York, obtained a post on the Tribune, became a popular lecturer, started work on Nile Notes of a Howadji (1851), and became a favorite in society. He wrote for Putnam's Magazine which he helped George Palmer Putnam to found. He became an associate editor along with Parke Godwin and managing editor Charles Frederick Briggs; the three also collaborated on a gift book called The Homes of American Authors (1853).

Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894) was an English essayist and art and literary critic. After graduating from Oxford he became acutely interested in literature, beginning to write articles and criticisms. The first of these to be printed was a brief essay upon Coleridge, contributed in 1866 to the Westminster Review. A few months later (January, 1867), his essay on Winckelmann, the first expression of his idealism, appeared in the same review. In the following year his study of Aesthetic Poetry appeared in the Fortnightly Review. By the time his philosophical novel Marius the Epicurean appeared, however, he had gathered quite a following. This, his chief contribution to literature, was published early in 1885.

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was an English author and intellectual, best known for his book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the West. In 1821, he went to London to dispose of some translations from German authors, but was persuaded first to write and publish an account of his opium experiences, which that year appeared in the London Magazine. This new sensation eclipsed Lamb's Essays of Elia, which were then appearing in the same periodical. He maintained himself by contributing to various magazines. His other works include: On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823), Walladmor (1825), Biographical Essays (1851), Autobiographical Sketches (1853), Romances and Extravaganzas (1877), and Collected Writings (1889).