Edwin A. Abbott was born in London in 1838. The son of a headmaster, Abbott was highly educated, attending the elite City of London School and St. John’s College, Cambridge. He was known as a brilliant scholar, achieving high marks in classics, mathematics, and theology, and became headmaster of his alma mater, the City of London School, at the age of 26. In 1876, he received a Hulsean Lectureship at Cambridge, a prestigious position that provides Cambridge graduates with the opportunity to lecture on any branch of Christian theology. Abbott retired from teaching in 1889 to devote himself entirely to his independent intellectual pursuits. He died in Hampstead, London, in 1926.

By the time Flatland was published in 1884, Abbott had been writing on a wide variety of topics for many years. In 1870, he wrote a textbook on Shakespearean grammar, which remains important to the study of Shakespearean language to this day. He also wrote a biography of Englishman Francis Bacon (1561-1626), an influential scientist, philosopher, and politician often considered the father of empiricism. In an attempt to interest readers in the Gospels, he wrote and anonymously published three texts known as “theological romances” in 1878, 1882, and 1908.