Rev. William Hunt was the son of the Rev. William Hunt, a vicar of Holy Trinity, Weston-super-Mare, and was born on 3 March 1842. He was educated at Harrow School during Charles Vaughan's headmastership, and then went up to Trinity College, Oxford, taking a second class in Classical Moderations in 1862, and a first in the old school of Law and Modern history in 1864. He was ordained in 1865 as curate to his father, and two years later he was appointed vicar of Congresbury, Somerset. In 1877-1879 and 1881-1882 he was also examiner in the School of Modern history at Oxford. In 1882 Hunt resigned his living and from there on devoted himself to literature. He was a frequent contributor to the Saturday Review, and to the Dictionary of National Biography, mostly for the biographies of the great English divines. In 1888 he published The English Church in the Middle Ages, and in 1893, for the Somerset Record Society, The Chartularies of Bath Priory. He was joint editor with Dr. Stephens, Dean of Winchester, to A History of the English Church; his own contribution was the first volume which deals with the English Church from its foundation to the Norman conquest. A few years later he joint-edited The Political History of England with Reginald Lane Poole, in twelve volumes. He was also the joint-editor of the series Historic Towns, and in 1907 he published a history of the Irish Parliament of 1775. William Hunt was also the president of the Royal Historical Society from 1905 to 1909, a D.Litt of his university, and an honorary Fellow of his college. Like George Saintsbury, he was well-versed in French literature. He died in 1931 at the age of 90.

The literary critic and historian George Edward Bateman Saintsbury was born in Southampton on 23 October 1845. He was educated at King's College School, London, and at Merton College, Oxford. Saintsbury was a schoolmaster at Manchester Grammar School and at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, before becoming headmaster of Elgin Educational Institute in 1874. From 1876 until 1895 he was a journalist in London, during which time, 1883-1894, he was the Assistant Editor of the Saturday Review. In 1895 he became Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at Edinburgh University. He held the Chair until 1915. His published works include Short history of French literature (1882), Essays in English literature(1890), Short history of English literature (1898), the three volume History of English prosody from the twelfth century to the present day (1906-1910), the two volume History of the French novel (1917-1919), and A last scrap book (1924). Professor George Saintsbury died in Bath on 28 January 1933.