Celia Grant, a lady fallen on hard times, lives in a grotty apartment building in London, supporting herself financially. One day she happens upon the young man in the adjoining room contemplating suicide, and saves his life, which he never forgets: 'I did not know her name until you told me just now; I saw her for only a few minutes; those few minutes, and her angelic goodness, changed the whole current of my life.'

One is forever hearing enough and to spare about old books and those who love them. There is a whole literature of the subject. The men themselves, from Charles Lamb downwards, have over and over again described their ecstasies--with what joy they have pounced upon some rare edition, and with what reverence they have ever afterwards regarded it.

Alice Brown (December 5, 1857 - June 21, 1948) was an American novelist, poet and playwright, best known as a writer of local color stories. She was born in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire and graduated from Robinson Seminary in Exeter in 1876. She later worked as a school teacher for five years, but moved to Boston to write full-time in 1884. She first worked at the Christian Register and then, starting in 1885, the Youth's Companion. She was a prolific author for many years, but her popularity waned after the turn of the 20th century. She produced a book a year until she stopped writing in 1935.

Ridgwell Cullum (13 August 1867 - 3 November 1943) was a British writer who wrote a large number of adventure novels over more than 30 years, usually set in sparsely populated regions of the United States or Canada. He left home aged 17 to join a gold rush in the Transvaal in South Africa, where he became involved in the conflict between British and Boer settlers; he travelled to the scene of another gold rush in Yukon in north-west Canada; he spent a few years cattle-ranching in Montana, USA. His first novel The Devil's Keg, set in Alberta, Canada, was published in 1903. After its success he settled in Britain and became a full-time writer. Several of his novels were made into films.