Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works range from novels to short stories to nonfiction. Her best-known works include Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) – which was adapted into a 2013 film – short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), Americanah (2013), We Should All Be Feminists (2014) and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017).
She was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008.
Sarah Prideaux was a bookbinder, teacher, historian and author of books about binding and illustration. Along with Katharine Adams (one of her students, and a close friend) and Sybil Pye, she was one of the noted women bookbinders of the period.
In 1888, at age 35 she started learning bookbinding, later studying in Paris. For several years she experimented, wrote articles and produced bound books inspired by Art Nouveau designs, with her work shown in various exhibits. By 1894, bindings bearing her signature were of professional quality. It has since been discovered that although she designed the bindings, selected the leather and marbled endpapers to a very detailed specification, the actual bookbinding was carried out by a French tradesman, Lucien Broca, and possibly others under her name. More than 276 books were bound and published under her signature.
As an expert on the history of bookbinding, Prideaux taught, lectured, and wrote reviews and articles for journals and magazines throughout the 1890s. These articles were collected and published as Bookbinders and their Craft. Her other books included Modern Bookbindings Their Design and Decoration and Aquatint Engraving A Chapter in the History of Book Illustration. She served as one of the directors of the Women’s Printing Society.
Sylvia Townsend Warner was an English musicologist, novelist and poet, known for works such as the novels Lolly Willowes and After the Death of Don Juan, the poetry collection Whether a Dove or a Seagull and several short story collections. She also served in the Red Cross during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.