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.

Gore, James Howard (1856-1939). American mathematics professor; Cather’s cousin. Born in Back Creek, VA, youngest son of Mahlon and Sidney Cather Gore (Willa Cather’s great-aunt), James showed early interest in the sciences. He graduated from Columbian University (now George Washington University) in 1877 and did post-graduate work abroad, returning to teach mathematics and geodesy at Columbian and at the Corcoran Scientific School; he received a PhD in 1888. In 1889 he married Swedish-born Lillian Sparrendahl, whom Cather admired. They had one daughter, Sidney, who died at age fifteen. Gore was a founder of the National Geographic Society and was associated with various scientific expeditions, but he was not part of actual polar expeditions, as Cather’s letters seem to imply. He was a member of several foreign orders from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Cather stayed with the Gores for part of her 1901 visit to Washington, DC. In The Professor’s House (1925), Tom Outland finds that the people he has to deal with in Washington, D.C., are obsessed with receiving orders and decorations.

Farrar, Geraldine (1882-1967). American opera singer. Born in Melrose, MA, to a professional baseball player father and an amateur singer mother, Geraldine Farrar began formal study of voice in Boston in 1894 and then studied in New York City from 1897 to 1899, when she, accompanied by her parents, left for study in Europe. Her operatic career began in earnest in 1900, and she made her American debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1906 in Roméo et Juliette. As a regular opera goer in New York City, Cather often heard Farrar sing at the Met, and she met her when researching “Three American Singers: Louise Homer, Geraldine Farrar, Olive Fremstad” (McClure’s Magazine December 1913). Cather comments on Farrar’s noted talent for acting, as well as singing, her operatic roles, and her indebtedness to French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who took Farrar under her wing in Paris. Elements of Farrar’s personality and career may have inspired aspects of Kitty Ayreshire, featured in Cather’s stories “A Gold Slipper” (1917) and “Scandal” (1919). Farrar retired from the operatic stage in 1922 but continued her regular concert touring in her personal Pullman rail car, bringing operatic music to small towns and working class audiences. She also acted in silent film versions of operas and was a popular recording artist. References in Cather’s letters suggest that Cather saw Farrar socially in New York City and may have corresponded with her, but no letters are known.

Mabie, Hamilton Wright (1846-1916). American editor, essayist, and critic. Born in New York, Hamilton Mabie graduated from Williams College in 1867 and Columbia Law School in 1869. He disliked practicing law, and in 1879 he joined the staff of the weekly Christian Union, becoming associate editor in 1884. Mabie published many volumes of essays on nature and literary subjects, and edited collections of myths and fairy tales for children. The magazine, renamed the Outlook in 1893, published brief but generally favorable reviews of Cather’s first three novels; although only the review of The Song of the Lark (1915) was signed by Mabie, Cather attributed the review of O Pioneers! to him also.