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.

Hergesheimer, Joseph (1880-1954). American novelist and short story writer. Born in Germantown, PA, Joseph Hergesheimer trained as a painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1913 he sold his first short stories to the Forum magazine. Mitchell Kennerley, who published his first novel, The Lay Anthony (1914), introduced Hergesheimer to Alfred Knopf, and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., brought out Three Black Pennys (1917) and all of the subsequent books. Hergesheimer was known for the lush aestheticism of his prose and his “exotic” foreign settings. His reputation was at its height in the early 1920s but went into a decline thereafter. It is not clear whether Willa Cather ever met Hergesheimer in person. However, she admired Knopf’s advertising of Java Head (1919), comparing it unfavorably to Houghton Mifflin’s lackluster marketing of her books, and the contrast informed her decision to leave Houghton Mifflin for Knopf.