Sandra M. Gilbert is a literary critic, a poet, and a professor of English literature at the University of California, Davis. She has taught at Williams College, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, and Princeton University. Together with Susan Gubar, she has co-authored and co-edited 11 scholarly texts. She lives in Berkeley, California. 

Susan Gubar is an author and professor of English literature at Indiana University. Her recent publications include a memoir recording her experience with ovarian cancer titled Memoir of a Debulked Woman. Together with Sandra M. Gilbert, she has co-authored and co-edited 11 scholarly texts. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a British novelist. She is credited with the modernization of the novel genre because she examined the lives of ordinary, middle-class people in her six novels. Austen’s novels explore notions of marriage and the position of women in 19th-century society. She never married.