E. E. Cummings was born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge, where he attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School before going on to study at Harvard University. An American citizen, he grew up in a city he would eventually leave behind as the pressures of the wider world drew him elsewhere.

During World War I, Cummings worked as an ambulance driver, an experience followed by his imprisonment in an internment camp. Back in the United States, he pursued an unusually wide range of creative work, functioning at once as a poet, novelist, playwright, and painter. His writing in English spanned multiple forms and formats: Tulips and Chimneys and is 5 appeared among his poetry collections, while No Thanks added further verse to his output. The Enormous Room stands as a notable prose work, and EIMI extended his writing into yet another register. CIOPW reflected his practice as a visual artist, and Santa Claus: A Morality showed his hand as a playwright. Fairy Tales, a further work, was published posthumously. In recognition of his career, Cummings received both a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Bollingen Prize.

Cummings died on September 3, 1962, at Joy Farm. Fairy Tales, published after his death, gave his body of work a concrete presence beyond his passing.