Li Yu. Referring to Li Yu as one of the greatest poets in traditional China, writing in the ci (lyric) genre that emerged toward the end of the Tang dynasty, The New Princeton Enclyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics explains that he synthesized the stylistic mode of refined subtlety and parataxis that characterized the poems of Wen Tingyun (ca. 812 - ca. 870) and the more direct stylistic mode of Wei Zhuang (ca. 836-910). "The last monarch of the Southern Tang (937-75) who became a political prisoner in the Song capital from 976 until his death [978], Li Yu produced ci poems that are intensely lyrical, viewing his own personal suffering in the light of the destiny of all mankind." See page 195.

Betty W. Lee (1935-2004) was born in China. She grew up in Hong Kong, then emigrated to the United States in 1957 to study library science. After obtaining an MA from Simmons College in Boston, she went on to study English literature at Columbia University in New York, obtaining another MA in 1963 after writing a dissertation on Virginia Woolf's Waves. Mrs. Lee raised three children in the suburbs of Buffalo, NY. She worked for the University of Hong Kong as a librarian from 1981 to 1995.