Elisabeth Paling Funk was born in Woerden, the Netherlands. She is an independent scholar, freelance editor and translator, and former adjunct assistant professor at Manhattanville College. Her articles on early American and Dutch-American literature have been published in the United States and the Netherlands. She is preparing her dissertation, "Washington Irving and His Dutch-American Heritage as Seen in A History of New York, The Sketch-Book, Bracebridge Hall, and Tales of a Traveller," for publication as a book. Martha Dickinson Shattuck is the editor and researcher with the New Netherland Research Center and the editor of Explorers, Fortunes, and Love Letters: A Window on New Netherland. She has published various articles on New Netherland, was the New Netherland and Colonial editor for The Encyclopedia of New York State, and is currently editing and annotating the New Netherland papers from the Bontemantel Collection in the New York Public Library.