Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914 and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in 1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA; Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues. Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in 1942. She died in Lincoln.

Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or “Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872. Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa, Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud, NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928 Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932), which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.

Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914 and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in 1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA; Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues. Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in 1942. She died in Lincoln.

Fremstad, Olive (1871-1951). Swedish-American opera singer. Born in Sweden, Ann Olivia Rundquist was adopted by a Scandinavian-American couple, the Fremstads, who raised her first in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, and then in Minnesota. She moved to New York City to study piano in 1890 and then to Germany to study voice with Lilli Lehmann. After a successful career in Europe as a mezzo-soprano, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1903, where she specialized in singing soprano roles in operas by Richard Wagner. Willa Cather first met Fremstad in 1913 while researching “Three American Singers,” an article for McClure’s Magazine in which Cather clearly prefers Fremstad as “the most interesting kind of American” over Geraldine Farrar and Louise Homer. Through 1916 Cather and Fremstad were in close and regular contact in person and through letters, although Cather’s letters to Fremstad have not been located and their friendship evidently cooled. Fremstad inspired many aspects of the story, personality, and career of Thea Kronborg, heroine of The Song of the Lark (1915), and she approved of the novel, although Cather did not want readers to identify the character too closely with her. Fremstad married and divorced twice. During the period Cather and Fremstad were in regular contact Fremstad lived as a couple with Mary Watkins (later Cushing) who, after Fremstad’s death, published a biography of her, The Rainbow Bridge (1954).

Mencken, Henry Louis (1880-1956) ("H. L."). American author, editor, and journalist. Born in Baltimore, MD, into a German immigrant family, Henry Louis Mencken worked in his father’s cigar factory for two years after graduating high school. At age eighteen he became a cub reporter for the Baltimore Herald, rising quickly through the journalistic ranks while also publishing poetry and short stories in national magazines. He became literary editor of the Smart Set magazine in 1909, later becoming co-editor with George Jean Nathan, while continuing to be a prolific and bold social and literary critic. He and Nathan founded the American Mercury magazine in 1923. Mencken reviewed many of Cather’s novels, and she began corresponding with him about her work early in her career as a novelist. Her stories “Her Boss” (1919) and “Coming, Eden Bower!” (1920) appeared in the Smart Set, and from 1920 Cather and Mencken shared Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., as a publisher (Mencken was a close personal friend of both Alfred and Blanche Knopf). Mencken was one of the strongest voices in favor of My Ántonia (1918), and Alfred Knopf commissioned him to write an appreciation of Cather for The Borzoi 1920; however, Cather’s attempt to manage his response to One of Ours (1922) by writing him in advance of publication and soliciting a review failed—Mencken wrote one of the most stingingly negative reviews of it. Mencken fell out of public favor in the early 1930s but became popular again with the publication of his fourth revision of The American Language in 1936, which he continued to revise for the rest of his life. He spent the final years of his life unable to write or speak as the result of a massive stroke in 1948.