Dora Knowlton Ranous was an American actress, author, editor, translator, and book reviewer. She began her literary career editing educational books and contributing to Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia and The Criterion. Ranous attained distinction as a translator of French and Italian classics, and among the books rendered into English by her, either alone or in collaboration with Dr. Rossiter Johnson, whom she assisted, are The Literature of Italy, The Immortals, a collection of French works published under the sanction of the Académie Française; Guy de Maupassant's stories in fifteen volumes, and Gustave Flaubert's writings in ten volumes. She wrote two books of her own, The Diary of a Daly Debutante and Good English in Good Form. A memoir entitled A Simple Record of a Noble Life, which included some of her unpublished work, appeared in 1916.

Rossiter Johnson was an American author and editor. He edited several encyclopedias, dictionaries, and books, and was one of the first editors to publish "pocket" editions of the classics. He was also an author of histories, novels, and poetry. Among his best known works was Phaeton Rogers, a novel of boyhood in Rochester, New York, where Johnson was born.