Mrs. Louisa Tucker Craigin (also Cragin), née Simmons was born in Roxbury, now a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts. She was gifted in languages: she translated musical works for both adults and children from German, French and Italian into English. She married Lorenzo Silas Craigin in 1859, and on census forms identified herself as a housewife. In the later years of her life, however, she seems to have also written both stories and articles on social, political and religious topics. One piece of music, “Song of the Viking,” even credits her for the poem it accompanies. In 1881 several literary magazines mentioned that she was to be one of the editors of a newspaper for young adults entitled “Youth and Pleasure.” She wrote a three-volume set entitled “Sweet Home Series” which Lothrop published posthumously. Craigin spent most of her life in Boston and died there but was buried in Dublin, New Hampshire, beside her son Henry Craigin.

Robert Craik was born in Montréal and graduated from McGill University as M.D., C.M. in 1854. Appointed house surgeon of the Montreal General Hospital, he distinguished himself by his heroic service during the cholera epidemic and by his subsequent reorganization of hospital services. From 1856 until 1861, Craik was demonstrator in anatomy in the Medical Faculty, and in 1859 he became curator of the Medical Museum. In 1861 he was appointed Professor of clinical surgery, and in 1867, Professor of chemistry. Craik gave up teaching in 1879, but remained treasurer of the faculty. He became Dean in 1889, and held this post for eleven years.

John Mockett Cramp was born on July 25, 1796, in St. Peters, Isle of Thanet, Kent, England.
He was a Baptist minister, educator, and author. He attended Stepney Theological Institute in London. He was ordained in 1818 and became pastor of the Dean Street Baptist Church in London and other pastorates in several parts of England. In 1844, his growing reputation as a Baptist scholar led to the offer of the presidency of the Canada Baptist College in Montreal. During his presidency, Cramp edited the Montreal Register and, after 1849, the Colonial Protestant, Journal of Literature and Science, and the Pilot. He also became interested in the efforts of Henriette Feller to evangelize French Canadian Catholics. In 1850, the board of governors of the newly formed Acadia College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, selected Cramp as its president. The college was on the verge of collapse, but Cramp energetically set out to revive the institution and earned for himself the title “second founder” of Acadia. In addition to his duties as president, he taught classical languages, history, philosophy, theology, logic, political economy, and even geology. He also delivered a monthly public lecture, preached every Sunday evening, acted as unofficial assistant pastor of the Wolfville Baptist Church, and edited the Abstainer, the Athenæum, and Journal of Temperance. He retired in 1869. Among the books he published are “A Text-Book of Popery” (1831); “The Reformation in Europe" (1833); " Lectures for These Times" (1844); “Baptist History" (1868); “The Lamb of God " (1871), and “Paul and Christ, a Portraiture and an Argument” (1873).
In 1820, he married Maria Agate (1787–1823). In 1826, he remarried Anne Burls (1796–1862). He died on December 6, 1881, in Wolfville, Kings, Nova Scotia.

Walter Crane was born on August 15 1845 in Liverpool, Lancashire England. His parents Thomas Crane (1808–59) and Marie Crane (née Kearsley) fostered an interest in the visual and literary arts in their four children. His father was a miniaturist and portraitist artist whose evening sketchclub encouraged Crane to set pencil to paper. By the age of thirteen the Cranes had moved to London where Walter Crane was able to show his illustrated to the art critic John Ruskin and the master engraver W.J. Linton. Between 1858 and 1862 Crane apprenticed under Linton--gaining experience in designing illustration for the printing process

Initiating his claim to fame as an illustrator, in 1863 Crane met the printer and entrepreneur Edmund Evans (1826-1905). The collaboration between printer and artist began in 1864 with the coloured covers for cheap railway novels. Evans pioneering work in coloured printing led to the cover-to-cover picture books that made Walter Crane alongside Kate Greenaway, and Randolph Caldecott best known as a children’s book illustrators. Between 1865 and 1886 Crane illustrated at least 48 titles for the children’s book market, many of which were reissued within the period. Crane’s illustrations for fairy tales and nursery rhymes fused together a range of influences from Japanese printing techniques, Pre-raphaelite aesthetics, and the figures in political cartoons.

Crane became a politically-conscious artist and a committed socialist, much like his friend and colleague William Morris whom he had met for the first time in 1870. Crane joined Morris in the Socialist League in 1884, and contributed illustrations to the league’s newspaper, The Commonweal. “Workers of the World Unite” exemplifies one of Crane’s many mottos. His often didactic socialist messages appear in a range of periodicals which also included Justice and The Clarion. Many of these illustrations were reproduced with additional drawings in Cartoons for the Cause, 1886-1896.

The Arts and Crafts Movement provided Crane with an avenue to develop his ideas on the potential unity between design and artistic labour. He contributed wall-paper and textile designs for Morris and Co, and produced illustrations for the Kelmscott Press, as well as a full scale panel paintings and friezes. As a leading member of this movement, Crane was a founder and president of the Art Workers’ Guild, and in 1888 founded the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society

Crane had long sought out the power of aesthetics to teach the masses. Dedicated to teaching, Crane became art director as well as a teacher at the Manchester School of Art (1893–1896) and then of Reading College (1896–1898). He was principal of the Royal College of Art, South Kensington, London (1898–1899). During this later period Crane began to publish his teachings on such topics as the history of books, techniques of composition and design, and the socialist art of William Morris.

By the end of his prolific career Crane had contributed to range of artistic practices, namely: drawing, painting, book design, textile design,wallpaper panels, ceramics, and illustration. He had illustrated over a hundred fiction and non-fiction titles–several of which he also authored. His autobiographical recollections in An Artist’s Reminiscence, 1907, is one of his last major publications. The autobiography illustrates a cosmopolitanism that had been part of Crane’s life as an artist, craftsman, teacher, and socialist. Survived by three children, he died one year after his wife Mary Frances (née Andrews) on March 14, 1915, Horsham, Sussex.

James Crankshaw was born on July 20, 1844, in Manchester, England.

He was a lawyer who immigrated to Canada in 1876. He studied law at McGill University (B.C.L., 1882), and was called to the bar of Quebec in 1883 (K.C., 1906). He practised law in Montreal and was the author of "The Criminal Code of Canada" (1894) and "A Practical Guide to Police Magistrates and Justices of the Peace” (1895), both of which reached several editions.

In 1867, he married Sarah Anne Ashton (1846–). In 1878, he remarried Hannah Fineberg. He died on December 16, 1921, in Montreal, Quebec.