John Erskine, educator, writer and musician, was born in New York on October 5, 1879. He received an A.B. in 1900, an A.M. in 1901, a Ph.D. in 1903 and an LL.D. in 1929 from Columbia University, as well as honorary degrees from Amherst College and the University of Bordeaux. He served during World War I in France, and was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. He served as instructor in English at Amherst before joining the faculty of Columbia University, where he spent most of his life. Erskine is credited with having started the system of General Education at Columbia through his Great Books colloquium. Erskine was also a musician of considerable talent, who performed occasionally at concerts and wrote two opera librettos, and a prolific writer who said that he had written something every day since the age of 16. He was married twice: to Pauline Ives until their divorce in 1945, and later to Helen Worden. Erskine died in 1951 at the age of 71.

Erskine's books include the autobiographical works The Memory of Certain Persons (1947), My Life as a Teacher (1948), My Life in Music (1950) and My Life as a Writer (unfinished); as well as several essays, poems and novels, of which the most successful was The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1926).