Sir Edmund William Gosse, 1849-1928, was British author, translator, literary historian, and critic who introduced the work of Henrik Ibsen and other continental European writers to English readers. Gosse started his career in 1867 as an assistant librarian at the British Museum. After making several trips to Sweden and Norway in 1872-74, he gained his first success by publishing reviews of Scandinavian literature. He developed friendships with many famous literary figures of his day, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, and Henry James, and he is in part responsible for the literary careers of W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and Siegfried Sassoon. Gosse's most famous work is his autobiography Father and Son (1907) which describes his relationship with his father Philip Henry Gosse. Among his other publications are several volumes of poetry and criticism and his work as the literary editor of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

Henry-Durand Davray, 1873-1944, was a French writer and translator. After studying English at the Sorbonne, he worked as a specialist in English literature for the Parisian newspaper Mercure de France. During World War I he worked as a war correspondent for the French government, and after the war he helped to found the Anglo-French Society to promote a good relationship between the two countries. He was also acquainted with many writers from the literary circles of both Paris and London. He translated the works of such authors as Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, W.B. Yeats, and H.G. Wells from English into French. Davray also translated Edmund Gosse's Father and Son into French, as well as some of his articles.