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.

Scaife, Roger Livingston (1875-1951). Head of publicity at Houghton Mifflin. An 1897 graduate of Harvard University, Scaife went to work for Houghton Mifflin in 1898 as assistant to Azaria Smith, head of the publicity department. Scaife subsequently assumed Smith’s position and became a shareholder of the corporation and secretary of the board of directors. In 1910, when Ferris Greenslet became editor in chief of the trade department, Scaife divided his shares 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. Scaife anonymously published three satirical novels with Houghton Mifflin, The Confessions of a Debutante (1913), Cape Codities (1920), and The Reflections of a T.B.M. (1920), and two books of children’s verse under his own name. Cather corresponded primarily with Greenslet about her novels, but in his absence she dealt with Scaife during the production of My Ántonia (1918), and her dissatisfaction with decisions made on his authority contributed to her decision to transfer her publishing business to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. In 1934 Scaife left Houghton Mifflin to become executive vice president of Little, Brown. He later became the fourth director of Harvard University Press.