Foerster, Norman (1887-1972). American literary scholar. Norman Foerster was born in Pittsburgh, PA; he was one of Cather’s students when she taught English at Central High School in Pittsburgh. He went on to receive his A.B. from Harvard in 1910 and his MA from the University of Wisconsin in 1912. He taught English at the universities of Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa, as well as at Duke University. Foerster was a part of the neohumanist movement, along with Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More. He wrote often about the role of higher education as well as about American literature. His book, Toward Standards (1930) was dedicated to Cather and to Robert Frost. Cather corresponded with him occasionally about his work.

Pater, Walter (1839-1894). English essayist and critic. Born near London and orphaned at an early age, Pater graduated from Queen’s College, Oxford and held a fellowship at Brasenose College. Best known for his essays collected in Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and Marius the Epicurean (1885), Pater advocated “art for art’s sake” and was a key early figure in the Aesthetic movement, influencing both Oscar Wilde and George Moore. Cather considered Pater a fine critic but discouraged others from emulating his style (#0183).

Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer. Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to 1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children, Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett, who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.

McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine, living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary, and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893 with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the "muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens, but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry, in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895). British biologist and author. Born in Middlesex, England, to George and Rachel Huxley, Huxley had little formal education. After a medical apprenticeship he won a scholarship enabling him to study at the Charing Cross Hospital from 1842 to 1845. In 1846 he entered the navy and served as an assistant surgeon aboard the HMS Rattlesnake and studied sea organisms later described in his Oceanic Hydrozoa (1859). Upon returning to England, he was elected into the Royal Society of London and quickly became one of the leading scientists of his era. In 1856 he began a lifelong friendship with Charles Darwin. A prolific author of popular articles and textbooks, Huxley became known as “Darwin’s bulldog” because of his work to popularize theories of evolution and scientific naturalism. Cather considered Huxley one of the best scientific writers.