Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Ukraine, in 1857. After both of his parents died of tuberculosis, Conrad went to live with his uncle in Switzerland. After attending school in Kraków, he joined the French and then the British merchant marines, sailing to exotic destinations like the West Indies and the Congo, which would later become the backdrops for some of his fiction. In 1894 he settled down in England and began his literary career. In 1902 Conrad published his most famous work, Heart of Darkness, and continued to write until his death in 1924.

Gail Fraser, author of The Lumby Lines, Stealing Lumby, and Lumby's Bounty, continues to work full-time on her acclaimed series about the extraordinary town of Lumby. She and her husband, artist Art Poulin, live with their beloved animals on Lazy Goose Farm in rural upstate New York. When not writing, Gail tends to their garden, orchard, and beehives.

Allan H. Simmons is a professor of modern and 20th-century literature at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, in London, and is a leading authority on the works of Joseph Conrad. He has coedited several volumes on Conrad, and was appointed co-General Editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad with Dr. J. H. Stape in 2008.

J. H. Stape is a research fellow at St. Mary's University, Twickenham, in London, and a recognized authority on the works of Joseph Conrad. Along with being a coeditor of several volumes on Conrad, he was the general editor of Conrad for Penguin Books, to which he contributed an edition of Typhoon and Other Stories. Stape has taught at universities around the world and has also published about the works of E. M. Forster, William Golding, Thomas Hardy, and Virginia Woolf.