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.

Reynolds, Paul Revere (1864-1944). American literary agent. Born in Boston, MA, Reynolds earned a BA from Harvard University in 1887 and an M.A in 1891, studying under William James. In the wake of the International Copyright Act of 1891, he became the U.S. agent for the English publisher Cassell, later undertaking similar work for other British publishers, He then began representing individual authors seeking to place fiction with magazines and book publishers, taking a ten per cent commission. Reynolds placed fiction in McClure’s Magazine when Cather was an editor there. Cather first allowed him to act as her own agent in 1916, placing “The Diamond Mine” in McClure’s. She was very pleased with the price he secured for the story, expressing “the greatest satisfaction in his conduct of affairs” (#0361). For the next decade, she allowed him to place short stories and serialize her novels in magazines, although not consistently. After the serialization of Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) in the Forum, she consistently put off his queries about what she was writing, and he was evidently surprised by the publication of “Neighbor Rosicky” in the Woman’s Home Companion (1930). Cather assured him that she still wanted to work with him, but either she herself or staff at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., arranged magazine publication of her remaining fiction.