Patrick O'Brian, 1914-2000, was an author known for his naval novels set during the Napoleonic Wars. O'Brian was born in London under the name Richard Patrick Russ. He published novels and stories under that name in the 1930s, including a collection of animal stories, Beasts Royal (1934), and a picaresque novel set in India, Hussein, An Entertainment (1938). During World War II, he worked for British intelligence. After the war, he took the name Patrick O'Brian and assumed an Irish identity; the connection between Patrick O'Brian and Richard Patrick Russ was broken in 1998 in the Daily Telegraph and in a biography by journalist Dean King. During the 1960s, O'Brian worked as a translator of French nonfiction, most notably translating the works of Simone de Beauvoir as well as Papillon (1970), the memoirs of French convict Henri Charrière. O'Brian is also the author of biographies of Pablo Picasso (1976) and Sir Joseph Banks (1987).

In 1967, O'Brian was approached by the American publishing house J.B. Lippincott. They had read his novelization of Commodore Anson's 1740 voyage to the pacific, The Golden Ocean (1956), and requested that he write another naval adventure for adults in the vein of C.S. Forester, who had died the previous year. The result, Master and Commander, published by Collins in 1969, was the first of his Napoleonic War novels about the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and surgeon Stephen Maturin. The series, which would eventually span 20 novels, enjoyed positive reviews when first published but only achieved popular success in the 1990s. In light of that success, O'Brian was appointed Commander of the British Empire in 1995.

Richard Ollard, 1923-2007, historian and editor at Collins, was born in Yorkshire and educated at Eton. During World War II, he served in the Navy aboard the HMS Victory. After the war, he taught history at the Royal Naval College from 1948-1959. He started working as a senior editor at William Collins & Sons in 1960, where he worked until 1983. He is also the author of several books on English naval history.