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.

Burnett, Whitney (1899-1973) (“Whit”). American writer, teacher, and anthologist. Burnett, born in Salt Lake City, UT, became a journalist and foreign correspondent. In 1931 he and his first wife, Martha Foley, founded Story magazine, which published the first work of many later-famous writers. He also wrote The Maker of Signs (1934), a collection of his own short stories, and The Literary Life and to Hell with It (1939), a memoir, and taught fiction writing at Columbia University in the 1930s and 1940s, where J.D. Salinger was his student. Burnett wrote Cather about his anthology, This Is My Best (1942), for which authors themselves were to choose their best story. She was not very receptive, but she adopted Alfred Knopf’s suggestion that she choose “Neighbour Rosicky” (1930). However, she apparently ignored Burnett’s request to choose another story for a later edition.