Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was a prolific novelist and critic. Also an influential editor, he created the literary journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, in whose pages he published work by authors such as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, Jean Rhys, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and many more. His 1915 novel The Good Soldier is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Nicholas Delbanco is the author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction, including, most recently, Still Life at Eighty: A Memoir, Why Writing Matters, and the novel It Is Enough. He is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod.