Seibel, George (1873-1958). American literary and drama critic. Cather met Seibel and his wife Helen while working as editor of the Home Monthly in Pittsburgh in 1896 and 1897. They regularly studied French and German together, Cather read her work in progress to him, and George reviewed April Twilights (1903) in the Pittsburgh Gazette.

Cather, John (1892-1959) (“Jack”). Cather’s brother. Born and raised in Red Cloud, NE, Jack was the seventh child and fourth son of Charles and Virginia Cather. He was nearly two decades younger than Willa Cather, and she was a doting older sister when he was a small boy. Because she missed him after her 1896 move to Pittsburgh, PA, she wrote several poems about him and the story “Jack-a-Boy” (1901). After graduating from Red Cloud High School in 1912, Jack studied for two years at University of Nebraska in Lincoln. With Willa Cather’s encouragement, in 1914 he enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh to study engineering. Willa Cather was then living in New York City but traveled to Pittsburgh to help him settle in and enjoyed visiting him and supported his decision to change his major to theater. It is not clear whether he graduated from Carnegie Tech but the British government trained him as a chemist so he could inspect munitions factories. While working in Smethport, PA, he met Irma Wells, and they married in 1918. They had two children, Catherine and Ella Faye. After World War I, he worked as a chemical engineer in the oil industry in Cincinnati, OH, Casper, WY, and Bradford, PA. In 1936 he moved to Whittier, CA, and became a business partner with his brothers Douglass and James in an oil production company. He died in Long Beach, CA. Willa Cather mentions him frequently in letters, but she seems to have had little contact with him and his family in later years, and no letters from her to him have surfaced.

Kipling, Rudyard (1865-1936). English fiction writer and poet. Born in Bombay, India, to English parents, Kipling was sent to England for his education but returned to India to work as a journalist. His poems and short stories about India won him an audience in England, and he settled in London in 1889. When he married Caroline Balestier in 1892, the couple moved to her home state of Vermont. In 1896 Willa Cather claimed to have met Kipling and she described the “46 minutes” of conversation with him as “alone worth” her move to Pittsburgh to work for the Home Monthly (#0028). In 1899, Cather wrote a column about his career for the Lincoln Courier, in which she noted the irony of Kipling trying to “live a respectable Puritan life in Vermont and be a full-fledged family man,” urging him to “Go back east.” In 1899, he did leave the U.S., but for London, not India, where he remained the rest of his life. McClure’s Magazine published Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) and the novel Kim (1900-1901), paying him $25,000 for serialization of the latter. When Cather traveled to London on McClure’s business in 1909, she carried a letter of introduction to him, but it is not clear whether she met him again there. Throughout her life Cather expressed enthusiasm for Kipling’s works, which she associated with a spirit of adventure, and her letters make clear that she followed his life and career closely.

Lamb, Charles (1775-1834). English essayist, journalist, playwright, and poet. Born in London, England, to John and Elizabeth Field Lamb, Lamb was educated at Christ’s Hospital, a charity school, until 1789. There he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who became a lifelong friend. In 1792, Lamb became clerk with the East India Company, a position which he held for thirty-three years, while also writing poetry, plays, and essays. He is best known for his essays, first published in the London Magazine and collected as Essays of Elia (1823) and The Last Essays of Elia (1833). Lamb is considered to be the first Romantic essayist. Cather read and appreciated Lamb’s work.