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.

Cather, Mary Virginia Boak (1850-1931) (“Virginia” or “Jenny”). Cather’s mother. Born in the Virginia to William Lee Boak and Rachel Seibert Boak, Virginia was educated in Baltimore, MD, and was a schoolteacher until her marriage to Charles Fectigue Cather in 1872. Her husband’s family were primarily Union supporters during the Civil War while her family supported the Confederacy (three brothers served in the Confederate Army although their mother opposed slavery). After her marriage she tried to help unite the divided family. Four of her children, Willa, Roscoe, Charles Douglas, and Jessica Virginia, were born in Virginia, while three, James Donald, Elsie Margaret, and John Esten, were born in Nebraska after the family moved there in 1883. Despite occasional differences, Cather remained in affectionate contact with her mother, who remained in Red Cloud, NE, where the family settled in 1884. After her husband’s death in 1928 Virginia Cather suffered a stroke while visiting her children and their families in California. She spent nearly three years in a sanitarium in Pasadena, CA, unable to speak. Willa Cather visited her there several times but was unable to travel quickly enough from Grand Manan to Red Cloud for her funeral and interment after she died in Pasadena in 1931. Virginia Cather was the prototype for Victoria Templeton in “Old Mrs. Harris” (1932), which Willa Cather completed shortly before her mother’s death.