George MacDonald (10 December 1824 - 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. MacDonald was a prolific novelist. He is now known particularly for his poignant fairy tales and fantasy works, and their influence on later authors, such as W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle. C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master" "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. "A few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence." Jessie Willcox Smith (September 6, 1863 - May 3, 1935) was a renowned American illustrator during the Golden Age of Children's illustration. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries she contributed her pictures to books and magazines. She illustrated stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. She had an ongoing relationship with Good Housekeeping, which included the long-running Mother Goose series of illustrations and also the creation of all of the Good Housekeeping covers from December 1917 to 1933. Among the more than 60 books that Smith illustrated were Louisa May Alcott's Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline, and Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses. [Wikipedia] Cecilia Dart-Thornton is a highly acclaimed fantasy author whose books are popular across the globe and translated into several languages. Notable works include The Bitterbynde Trilogy.