Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer. Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to 1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children, Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett, who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of the company with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet negotiating contracts and supervising editing; when Greenslet was absent from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.

Wadleigh, Frank Alonzo (1857-1933). Railroad passenger agent. Born in Clinton, IA, Wadleigh received his BS from the State University of Iowa in 1879 and began working for the Chicago Northwestern Railway in 1881. In 1882, he moved to Pueblo, CO, and began a long career with the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. In 1913, the railroad promoted Wadleigh to passenger traffic manager, a role in which he served until his retirement in 1927. As passenger traffic manager, he produced a series of illustrated guidebooks of Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, including Beautiful Historical Taos: A Wonderland for Tourists (1916), in which he listed Cather as among the artists who visit Taos, NM. Wadleigh also provided information of the region and shared photographic prints of his promotional material with Cather.

Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor, advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska, earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process, reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism. She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.

Blumenschein, Ernest Leonard (1874-1960). American painter and illustrator. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Ernest Blumenschein studied both violin and illustration in Cincinnati, OH, where his father worked as an organist and conductor. In 1892 he transferred from the Cincinnati Art Academy to the Art Students League in New York City, and then studied in Paris, France, before returning to New York City in 1896 to establish his illustration studio. A commission from McClure’s Magazine in 1897 took him for the first time to New Mexico and Arizona. He continued to produce illustrations for McClure’s, including for Cather’s “The Namesake” (March 1907), and for other leading national magazines. From 1912 to 1915 he taught at the Art Students League but also spent summers in Taos, NM, where he was a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists. In 1919 Blumenschein closed his New York studio and moved to Taos to paint. He died in Albuquerque, NM.