William Butler (W. B.) Yeats, 1865-1939, was an Irish senator and poet. He was born on June 13, 1865 in Dublin, Ireland. He spent his childhood in London, but he retained an affinity for native Irish culture and tradition through frequent visits to County Sligo. After studying at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art, Yeats published his first collection of poetry, The Wanderings of Oisin, and Other Poems, in 1889. He was a key figure of the Irish Revival, and his poetry frequently dealt with Ireland's pagan roots and the Irish Nationalist movement. He was also interested in the occult, and spiritualism featured prominently in his works. When the Irish Free State was founded in 1922, Yeats accepted a position in the new Irish Senate, which he would hold for six years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and he is considered one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century. He died on January 28, 1939 while abroad, but he was ultimately buried in Drumcliffe Church, County Sligo.

Schuyler B. Jackson, 1900-1968, was a poetry and literary critic for Time magazine. He was born on August 18, 1900 in Bernardsville, New Jersey and attended Pomfret, a preparatory school in Connecticut, before attending Princeton. There he published his first article on Yeats. As poetry reviewer for Time, Jackson reviewed the poems of Laura Riding in 1938. They developed a relationship and were married on June 20, 1941. They moved to Wabasso, Florida in 1943, where they lived together and ran a citrus farm until Jackson's death on July 4, 1968. Jackson and Riding collaborated on the influential work Rational Meaning: A New Foundation for the Definition of Words and Supplementary Essays, which Riding completed in 1974, as well as on The Dictionary of Related Meanings.