Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath. In addition to his fiction (poetry, drama and dialogues), he also wrote many essays and aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events. Valéry is best known as a poet, and is sometimes considered to be the last of the French Symbolists. But he published fewer than a hundred poems, and none that drew much attention. On the night of 4 October 1892, during a heavy storm, Paul Valéry entered an existential crisis, which made a big impact on his writing career. Around 1898, his writing activity even came to a near-standstill, due partly to the death of his mentor Stéphane Mallarmé and for nearly twenty years from that time on, Valery did not publish a single word until 1917, when he finally broke this 'Great Silence' with the publication of La Jeune Parque at forty-six years of age. This obscure but superbly musical masterpiece, of 512 alexandrine lines in rhyming pairs, had taken him four years to complete, and immediately secured his fame. It is esteemed by many in France as the greatest French poem of the 20th century.

Graham Dunstan Martin (Leeds, Reino Unido, 21 de octubre de 1932). Es un escritor, filólogo y profesor universitario británico. Se licenció en la Universidad de Oxford en Filología Francesa, y tras varios años dando clases en colegios, comenzó a enseñar poesía, literatura y filosofía en la Universidad de Edimburgo, donde permaneció desde 1965 y hasta su jubilación en el año 2000. Su obra es conocida por públicos muy diversos, puesto que ha escrito novelas de fantasía tanto para niños como para adultos, además de haber realizado trabajos de crítica literaria, algunos ensayos filosóficos y traducciones profesionales de poesía francesa.