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Henry James, novelist, was born in New York City on 15 April 1843. He was educated at Harvard University after spending several years abroad with his family. In 1876 James moved to London, England. A Portrait of a Lady was serialized in both the United States and Britain in 1880 and published in 1881. Several of his best novels were written later: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The Ambassadors (1903) and The Golden Bowl (1904). In 1915 James became a British subject and in 1916 was awarded the Order of Merit by George V. James died on 28 February 1916.

C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 29 November 1898 and educated at Oxford. He was a literary scholar, critic and novelist, fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1925-1954 and afterwards professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. In addition to scholarly works, he wrote popular religious and moral books such as The Problem of Pain (1940).

However, he is best known as an author of children's books — most notably the Chronicles of Narnia, the most popular of which is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950). He died at The Kilns, Headington Quarry, near Oxford on 22 November 1963.

Alexander Logie was born in Rosefield, Nairnshire, Scotland in 1823. It is not known when he moved to Canada. In 1843, he was admitted as a student at law by the Law Society of Upper Canada and was called to the Bar in 1848. He practiced in Hamilton, Ontario, and later served as a judge with the Wentworth County Court (1854-1873). Logie was active with
the St. Paul's Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, acting as a teacher, elder and trustee. He served on Hamilton City Council from 1857 to 1860. Logie died in Hamilton on 10 December
1873.

Herbert Edward Palmer, lyric and narrative poet and critic, was born in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire on 10 February 1880 and educated at Birmingham and later Bonn Universities. For many years he worked as a schoolmaster. In 1921 he relinquished his post as English master at St. Alban's school to devote himself to a full-time literary career. His Collected Poems were published in 1933. He published an autobiography, The Mistletoe Child, in 1935. Palmer died on 17 May 1961.

Wilmarth S. Lewis was an important American collector, particularly noted for his collection of Horace Walpole.

Sammy Shields, comedian, was born in Glasgow on 20 June 1874. He made his first appearance on the variety stage at the Holborn Empire in June 1905 and went on to a successful career in music hall theatres. He died in London in 1933.

Dame Ethel Smyth, composer, author, and feminist, was born on 23 April 1858 in Sidcup, England. She was educated at the Leipzig Conservatorium. As well as several operas and other musical pieces, she composed suffragette music, including The March of the Women.

She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University. She wrote several autobiographical works, beginning with <I>Impressions That Remained (1919) and ending with What Happened Next* (1940). She died in Woking, Surrey on 9 May 1944.

Terence Rattigan, the playwright, was born in 1911 in London and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford. Shortly after leaving Oxford without a degree he had a play produced in the West End. He excelled in both stage plays and films. Some of his best known works are The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version and Separate Tables. Rattigan died in Bermuda in 1977.

Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe (29 May 1883 – 2 June 1943) was a Canadian obstetrician, best known for delivering and caring for the Dionne quintuplets, the first quintuplets known to survive early infancy. Before modern fertility treatments, multiple births were a rare event and, when they did occur, the babies were not likely to survive. The 1934 birth of the Dionne Quintuplets in isolated Callander, Ontario (near North Bay), was regarded as a medical miracle and the country doctor who ensured their survival became an international celebrity. This collection consists of a small group of photographs of Dr. Dafoe basking in the fame which the births brought him. The images show Dafoe being honoured at various events in Washington (a meeting with President Roosevelt), New York City and Atlantic City between 1934 and 1941. There are no photographs of the famous quints.

C.C. Brant was a teamster hauling logs from a logging dump in Whitney, Ontario in the winter of 1919. Shortly thereafter he moved to Fort St. John, British Columbia. In the winter of 1922 he had been there long enough to apply for a land patent. He still had his horses but was also ranching at the Z Cross Ranch. He was considering going into a partnership with others so that he would be free to return back to Ontario for a visit.

Fred R. Miller was born in 1878. He married Edna A. Noxon in Toronto in June 1903. The couple had one daughter, Helen, born in 1914. He joined the family business, Roger Miller & Sons, an engineering company. The company was involved in many projects in Toronto including the Eastern Gap.

J.M. Moyes was with the Canadian Infantry, 13th Battalion. Originally from Dundee, Scotland, he enlisted in Quebec in 1914 as a Private. His attestation papers list his occupation as an artist. Throughout the war he continued to draw and paint, including teaching his fellow soldiers to draw while waiting to return home in 1919. By the end of the war he had attained the rank of Lieutenant and continued to paint after the war, though he is best known for his depictions of the war. At least one of his paintings is at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, and another at the Black Watch of Canada Regimental Museum in Montreal.

Herbert Stuart Finn, of Chesley, Ontario, served in the First World War. He was hospitalized due to a gas attack in France, eventually returning to Canada, but passed away in 1919 at a military hospital in the Ontario Reformatory School in Guelph.

John (Jack) Mitchell of 42 Florence St., Hamilton joined the Canadian Army in 1916 at the age of 26, but had previously served three years with the 91st Hamilton Battalion. He was part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France until he was discharged in May, 1919. Jack was believed to have worked in supply and it is unclear how he came to be in possession of the map. It may have been to be used as a road map, to help him perform his duties.

Oliver Ridsdale Baldwin, 2nd Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, was born in 1899. An author and journalist, he was sometime Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War and served as Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Leeward Islands, 1948-1950. He was also a Member of Parliament representing Dudley in 1929-1931 and Paisley 1945-1947. He died in 1958 and was succeeded by his brother.

Laura Beecroft, a missionary with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, began a period of work with the Christian and Missionary Alliance Girls' Training School in Jerusalem, Palestine during the year of 1912. Laura was a missionary and teacher of several subjects including history, Bible studies, and English grammar, composition, spelling and reading. Laura remained in this position until 1915, when in January of that year she relocated to Cairo, Egypt and studied Arabic. Later that year, Laura joined her mother and sister in New York until 1920 when she returned to the American Missionary School in Jerusalem for an unknown period of time.

Baron de Boesner was an Austrian banker and perhaps a diplomat. Around 1807 he was in the employ of le comte de la Fare, Bishop of Nancy, for the business affairs of King Louis XVIII in a relation to the court of Vienna.

Elsie J. Corrigan wrote an M.A. thesis, titled "Naomi Mitchison's Treatment of the Historical Novel", at the University of Toronto in 1951. She died in the late 1970s, probably 1979.

Sarah Dixon, poet of Canterbury, was very born in 1671 at Rochester, Kent. Poems on Several Occasions is her only published book. For further information on Dixon, see Messenger, Pastoral Tradition and the Female Talent (2001)

Robert Graves was born at Wimbledon on 25 July 1895 and educated at Charterhouse and St. John's College, Oxford. His powerful autobiography, Goodbye to All That was published in 1929. He is known for both his historical novels, beginning with I, Claudius and Claudius the God in 1934 and his poetry which was collected several times, including 1955 and again in 1975. He died at his home in Deyá, Marjorca on 7 December 1985.