Alfred Edward Housman, 1859-1936, was a poet, classical scholar, and textual editor. The oldest of seven children, he was born in Worcestershire in 1859. He won a scholarship to Oxford, where he became friends with the bibliographer Alfred Pollard and with Moses Jackson, famously the object of Housman's unrequited love. Despite being a capable student, Housman failed his final examinations and had to return to Oxford for an additional semester, receiving a lower-level pass degree. In 1882, he took the civil service examination and worked as a clerk in the Patent Office in London while living with Moses Jackson and his younger brother Adalbert. He simultaneously worked in the evenings at the British Museum Library and began publishing well-respected papers of textual criticism on Greek and Latin authors, during which time he established his reputation as meticulous in his own scholarship and ruthless to other scholars whom he considered sloppy. In 1892, he applied to become the Latin Chair at University College, London. In 1896, he published at his own expense his first collection of poetry, Shropshire Lad, which became a popular success. In 1911, he received the Kennedy Professorship at Cambridge University and a fellowship at Trinity College. Between 1903 and 1930 Housman dedicated his considerable abilities in textual criticism to a five-volume critical edition of Manilius' Astronomicon. He published his second book of poems twenty-six years after the first, Last Poems (1922), at the age of 62. A third volume of poetry, edited by his brother, the writer Laurence Housman, was published posthumously in 1936.

Grant Richards, 1872-1948, was a publisher. In 1897, at the age of 24, he opened his own publishing house. In 1898, he established his reputation with the publication of George Bernard Shaw's Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant and a new edition of A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. In 1901, he launched the World's Classics series (still published as Oxford World's Classics), which consisted of uncopyrighted reprints of classics sold at an affordable price, and in 1914, he published James Joyce's Dubliners (but declined A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). His publishing house went bankrupt twice, in 1905 and 1926, but the business recovered both times. He also published several of his own novels, beginning with Caviare in 1912.

Grant Richards had a lifelong professional relationship with A.E. Housman, beginning with his publication of the second edition of Shropshire Lad in 1898. He also published Housman's five-volume critical edition of Roman poet, astronomer, and mathematician Marcus Manilius, as well as Housman's second volume of poetry, Last Poems (1922). Richards is also the author of a memoir, Housman, 1897-1936, about his professional relationship and friendship with the poet.

G.B.A. (Geoffrey Bernard Abbott) Fletcher, 1903-1995, was a classicist. He was a member of the Classics Department at Armstrong College, now Newcastle University, from 1937 to 1969. His works include annotations on Tacitus, and he was a contributor to the Oxford Classical Dictionary. He contributed an appendix to Grant Richards' memoir of Housman, Housman, 1897-1936, which details the literary references made in Housman's poems.