Margaret of Anjou (French: Marguerite d'Anjou) (23 March 1430 – 25 August 1482) was the wife of King Henry VI of England. As such, she was Queen consort of England from 1445 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471. She also claimed to be Queen consort of France from 1445 to 1453. Born in the Duchy of Lorraine, into the House of Valois-Anjou, Margaret was the second eldest daughter of René I of Naples and Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine.

She was one of the principal figures in the series of dynastic civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses and at times personally led the Lancastrian faction. Due to her husband's frequent bouts of insanity, Margaret ruled the kingdom in his place. It was she who called for a Great Council in May 1455 that excluded the Yorkist faction headed by Richard, Duke of York, and thus provided the spark that ignited a civil conflict that lasted for over thirty years, decimated the old nobility of England, and caused the deaths of thousands of men, including her only son Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471.

Anjou (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʒu]) is a former county (in the sense of being ruled by a count, from c. 880), duchy (1360) and province centred on the city of Angers in the lower Loire Valley of what, since the early 13th century, we know as western France. Its traditional Latin name was Andegavia.

Anjou was united with the English Crown from 1151-1199, when Henry II, and, in turn, his (third) son Richard the Lionheart, inherited the county, and thus themselves became Counts of Anjou. At its peak, the Angevin Empire then spread from Ulster to the Pyrenees. But Richard had no legitimate issue, so in 1199 Anjou passed to his nephew, Arthur of Brittany (the posthumous son of Henry II’s fourth son, Geoffrey), while the Crown of England passed to Henry II’s fifth son and Richard’s youngest brother, John. Count Arthur was taken prisoner by John in 1203, and disappeared in murky circumstances. In 1204, the county as a whole was in turn seized by France. Its status was elevated to that of a duchy for Prince Louis, the second son of John II of France, and remained as such until the Revolution. Today, Anjou corresponds largely to the present-day département of Maine-et-Loire.

Philippa Gregory (Kenya, 9 January 1954) is an English writer of historical novels. Her best known work is The Other Boleyn Girl (2001).

Philippa Gregory was born in Kenya. When she was two years old, her family moved to England. She was a "rebel" at school, but managed to attend the University of Sussex. She worked in BBC radio for two years before attending the University of Edinburgh, where she earned her doctorate in 18th-century literature. Gregory has taught at the University of Durham, University of Teesside, and the Open University, and was made a Fellow of Kingston University in 1994.

She has written novels set in several different historical periods, though primarily the Tudor period and the 16th century. Reading a number of novels set in the 17th century led her to write the bestselling Lacey trilogy — Wideacre, which is a story about the love of land and incest, The Favoured Child and Meridon. This was followed by The Wise Woman. A Respectable Trade, a novel of slave trade in England, set in 18th-century Bristol, was adapted by Gregory for a four-part drama series for BBC television. Gregory's script was nominated for a BAFTA, won an award from the Committee for Racial Equality, and the film was shown worldwide.

Susan Higginbotham is an American historical fiction author. She has written on the Middle Ages and the Wars of the Roses.

Higginbotham began working on her first novel, The Traitor's Wife in 2003, and after reading some articles on self-publishing, she self-published in 2005. It won ForeWord magazine's 2005 Silver Award for historical fiction and the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards' Gold Medal for Historical/Military Fiction. It is a fictional account of the life of Eleanor de Clare, wife of Hugh le Despenser the Younger. Sourcebooks contacted her in 2008, and offered to republish it. Her next novel was Hugh and Bess, a sequel to her first novel, depicting the life of Eleanor and Hugh's eldest son Hugh le Despencer, 2nd Baron le Despencer. It was reissued in August 2009. Her next book, The Stolen Crown, was published in 2010 and is a fictional depiction of Catherine Woodville, Duchess of Buckingham. Her latest novel, The Queen of Last Hopes, features Margaret of Anjou.

Higginbotham earned her undergraduate degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, and her master's degree in English literature from Hunter College in New York. She received her law degree from Campbell University, and began working for a legal publisher, a position she still holds today.

Jacob Abbott (November 14, 1803 – October 31, 1879) was an American writer of children's books.

Abbott was born at Hallowell, Maine to Jacob and Betsey Abbott. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1820; studied at Andover Theological Seminary in 1821, 1822, and 1824; was tutor in 1824-1825, and from 1825 to 1829 was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Amherst College; was licensed to preach by the Hampshire Association in 1826; founded the Mount Vernon School for Young Ladies in Boston in 1829, and was principal of it in 1829-1833; was pastor of Eliot Congregational Church (which he founded), at Roxbury, Massachusetts in 1834-1835; and was, with his brothers, a founder, and in 1843-1851 a principal of Abbott's Institute, and in 1845-1848 of the Mount Vernon School for Boys, in New York City.

He was a prolific author, writing juvenile fiction, brief histories, biographies, religious books for the general reader, and a few works in popular science. He died in Farmington, Maine, where he had spent part of his time after 1839, and where his brother, Samuel Phillips Abbott, founded the Abbott School.