Sergeant, Elizabeth Shepley (1881-1965). American journalist and author. Born and raised in Winchester, MA, a suburb of Boston, Elizabeth Sergeant graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1903. In 1910, Pauline Goldmark sent her to Cather at McClure’s Magazine with a proposed article, published as “Toilers of the Tenements,” and Cather and Sergeant became lifelong friends. In 1914 Sergeant became one of the original contributors to the New Republic. While on assignment in France in 1917 she was injured by a land mine; her injury and recuperation were the subject of Shadow-Shapes: Journal of a Wounded Woman (1920). She moved to New Mexico in 1920 and became involved with the Taos artists colony and advocated for Native American rights, but her work frequently took her back to New York City. She included Cather in her collection of portraits of prominent Americans, Fire under the Andes (1927). Sergeant studied with Carl Jung and Toni Woolf in Zurich, Switzerland, from 1929 to 1931. When she returned to the U.S. she sold her house in New Mexico and settled in New York City, writing many magazine articles about authors and psychological topics. She later moved to Rockland County, NY. Cather’s letters to Sergeant comment frequently on both her own and Sergeant’s writing and testify to a strong and lively friendship maintained despite Sergeant's being a committed reformer and far to the left of Cather politically and culturally. Sergeant’s Willa Cather: A Memoir (1953) includes extensive paraphrases of Cather’s letters to her.

Harrison. Periodical editor. There is insufficient evidence for a definitive identification, but this may be Austin Harrison (1873–1928), the British editor of the English Review from 1909-1923. The Review, founded by Ford Madox Ford, published fiction by many well-known writers, including Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence. Austin Harrison is credited with opening the English Review to women and non-British writers and may have been contacted by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant about the possible serialization of Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913) in its pages.

Whitman, Walter, Jr. (1819-1892) (“Walt”). American poet and journalist. Born in West Hills, NY, to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman and Walter Whitman Sr., Walt Whitman began his career in journalism as a printer’s apprentice. By 1846 he edited the Brooklyn Daily Eagle before moving to New Orleans to edit the New Orleans Daily Crescent. From 1850 to 1855 he built houses and worked in real estate in New York. Whitman first published his monumental work, Leaves of Grass, in 1855 and went on to produce eight more editions. Willa Cather, in an 1896 Nebraska State Journal article called Leaves of Grass “a sort of dictionary of the English language.” She borrowed the title of her novel O Pioneers! (1913) from Whitman’s poem, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” (1865). Cather also referred to Whitman in My Mortal Enemy (1926).

Bunner, Henry Cuyler (1855-1896). American writer. Born in Oswego, NY, Henry Bunner moved to New York City, where he published his first novel in 1887; he was also a popular and prolific writer of short stories, some in collaboration with his friend Brander Matthews. Among these stories was a collection, Made in France (1893), in which Bunner adapted stories by Guy de Maupassant, whom he admired. He also wrote poetry, and a few plays in collaboration with others. Bunner edited Puck magazine, turning it from a purely comic paper into a political force against corruption. He married Alice Learned around 1886, and they had four children. Cather knew of Bunner's works, and doubted their lasting value.