The Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle is credited with writing "the history of the world is but the biography of great men". As many readers of this Journal will appreciate, great women have also played an important role in the development of marketing theory, thought and practice (Tadajewski and Maclaran, 2013). To tell history is to tell the stories of those involved and in this issue we present the autobiographical narratives of four major figures in the history of marketing and consumer research. Each has made substantive contributions to their respective topical areas.