Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and One of Ours (1922), partly because she was dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an important personal friendship.

Monroe, Harriet (1860-1936). American editor and poet. Harriet Monroe was born in Chicago, IL, and earned a reputation as a poet while still young. However, she soon realized how difficult it was to make a living as a poet and worked as a journalist for many years. In 1912, with money from a settlement and with wealthy Chicagoans as sponsors, she launched Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, which published, and paid fairly for, the work of poets who would become recognized as many of the twentieth century’s best. Monroe solicited poems by Cather for her magazine and published “Spanish Johnny” and “The Palatine” in her anthology, New Poetry (1917), but Cather was displeased at the typographical errors in them.