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.

James, Henry (1843-1916). Expatriate American fiction writer and critic. Born in New York City to philosopher Henry James and Mary Robertson Walsh James, Henry, Jr., was educated in both the United States and Europe. After beginning his career in the U.S., he moved to Paris in 1875 and lived the rest of his life in Europe, primarily in England, but he also made regular extended trips to the Continent. James was influential as both a writer and a theorist of fiction and was known for fiction about Americans abroad and for representing the interior consciousness of his characters. In the Lincoln Courier in 1895, Willa Cather praised James as “that mighty master of language and keen student of human action and motives.” Cather followed James’s lead in many of her short stories of the 1890s and 1900s and in Alexander’s Bridge (1912); Witter Bynner, who worked for S. S. McClure, sent Cather’s story collection The Troll Garden (1905) to James. In “My First Novels [There Were Two],” however, Cather characterized her Jamesian phase as a false start. She never met James in person but narrowly missed meeting him at Annie Adams Fields’ summer home during his final visit to the U.S. in 1910-1911. James died in England, having renounced his American citizenship during World War I.