White, William Allen (1868-1944). American newspaper editor and fiction writer. As the editor and publisher of the Emporia Gazette, White had an audience and influence far beyond the small town of Emporia, KS. He married Sallie Lindsay in 1893 and they bought the Gazette in 1895, with his wife working with him on all aspects of producing the paper. His fiery anti-Populist editorial “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”, published during the 1896 presidential campaign, made his national reputation, although his politics later shifted from his early conservative Republicanism. Dubbed the “Sage of Emporia” by H.L. Mencken for his widely reprinted editorials, he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for an editorial advocating free speech. He began publishing short stories about small-town life in the 1890s, including in McClure’s Magazine; Cather later remembered reading his “Court of Boyville” stories with her brother Roscoe and marveling that a man from Kansas had been able to publish them in McClure’s (#2242). White stopped writing fiction after the failure of his novel In the Heart of a Fool (1918), however. In the Nation Randolph Bourne praised My Ántonia (1918) while denigrating the “swollen bulk” and “stale brightness of conversation” in White’s fiction. Cather approved Bourne’s comparison, dismissing White’s “jocular, familiar, grapenutsy way” of presenting his subject matter that “really presents…his own essentially vulgar personality” (#2085). Cather’s correspondence with White commenced in 1919. She later asked him to review One of Ours (1922), suggesting that although she had few “readers in Nebraska or Kansas,” the novel was for her “home people,” who would be persuaded by his opinion (#0603). He apparently did not review the novel, but they met when he visited New York City in October 1922 and maintained a cordial correspondence until his death.

Mencken, Henry Louis (1880-1956) ("H. L."). American author, editor, and journalist. Born in Baltimore, MD, into a German immigrant family, Henry Louis Mencken worked in his father’s cigar factory for two years after graduating high school. At age eighteen he became a cub reporter for the Baltimore Herald, rising quickly through the journalistic ranks while also publishing poetry and short stories in national magazines. He became literary editor of the Smart Set magazine in 1909, later becoming co-editor with George Jean Nathan, while continuing to be a prolific and bold social and literary critic. He and Nathan founded the American Mercury magazine in 1923. Mencken reviewed many of Cather’s novels, and she began corresponding with him about her work early in her career as a novelist. Her stories “Her Boss” (1919) and “Coming, Eden Bower!” (1920) appeared in the Smart Set, and from 1920 Cather and Mencken shared Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., as a publisher (Mencken was a close personal friend of both Alfred and Blanche Knopf). Mencken was one of the strongest voices in favor of My Ántonia (1918), and Alfred Knopf commissioned him to write an appreciation of Cather for The Borzoi 1920; however, Cather’s attempt to manage his response to One of Ours (1922) by writing him in advance of publication and soliciting a review failed—Mencken wrote one of the most stingingly negative reviews of it. Mencken fell out of public favor in the early 1930s but became popular again with the publication of his fourth revision of The American Language in 1936, which he continued to revise for the rest of his life. He spent the final years of his life unable to write or speak as the result of a massive stroke in 1948.

White, Sallie Lindsay (1869-1950). American newspaper editor. Born in Nicholasville, KY, Sallie Lindsay taught for five years in Kansas City, MO, before marrying William Allen White in 1893. In 1895 the Whites purchased the Emporia Gazette and moved to Emporia, KS. Sallie was highly involved in producing and developing the paper. After her husband died in 1944, Sallie White became co-owner of the Gazette. While Willa Cather was a friend of William White, it is unclear if she knew Sallie White personally.