Rudyard Kipling was born in India in 1865. After intermittently moving between India and England during his early life, he settled in the latter in 1889, published his novel The Light That Failed in 1891 and married Caroline (Carrie) Balestier the following year.

They returned to her home in Brattleboro, Vermont, where Kipling wrote the two Jungle Books and Captains Courageous.

He continued to write prolifically and was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 but his later years were darkened by the death of his son John at the Battle of Loos in 1915. He died in 1936.

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, in 1805. His Fairy Tales, the first children's stories of their kind, which were published in instalments from 1835 until his death in 1875, have been translated into more than a hundred languages and adapted for every kind of media.

American author Thomas Bulfinch (1796–1867) was steeped in classical culture from an early age, attending the Boston Latin School, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Harvard College.

His first book, The Age of Fable, told of gods and heroes as portrayed in the works of Ovid and Virgil. It was later combined with The Age of Chivalry and Legends of Charlemagne in a single volume known as Bulfinch's Mythology, which has entertained and educated generations of children and adults.