Anatole France born François-Anatole Thibault, 16 April 1844 - 12 October 1924 was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie Française, and won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament". France is also widely believed to be the model for narrator Marcel's literary idol Bergotte in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

Alice Muriel Williamson was an American-British novelist. She was born in America, the daughter of Mark Livingston of Poughkeepsie. She came to England when young. In 1894, soon after arrival in England, she married the magazine editor Charles Norris Williamson (1859-1920), "the first editor to whom she presented an introduction." Many of her books were jointly written with her husband. After her marriage she introduced herself as Mrs. C. N. Williamson. A number of their novels cover the early days of motoring and can also be read as travelogues. Alice apparently said of her husband "Charlie Williamson could do anything in the world except write stories" she said of herself "I can't do anything else." She continued to write after her husband's death in 1920.