Théophile Gautier(1811–1872) was one of the key poets of the French nineteenth century.Norman R. Shapirois professor of Romance languages and literatures at Wesleyan University and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Patricia Duncker is the author of Hallucinating Foucault (winner of the Dillons First Fiction Award and the McKitterick Prize in 1996), James Miranda Barry, The Deadly Space Between and Miss Webster and Ch�rif (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2007). She has written two books of short fiction, Monsieur Shoushana's Lemon Trees (shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen Award in 1997) and Seven Tales of Sex and Death, and a collection of essays on writing and contemporary literature, Writing on the Wall.Most recently, she published The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award 2010 and the Green Carnation Prize 2011).