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.

Rascoe, Burton (1892-1957). American journalist and literary critic. Born in Kentucky and raised in Oklahoma, Burton Rascoe attended the University of Chicago from 1911 until 1913 and began writing for the Chicago Tribune while still a student. He became literary editor of the New York Tribune in 1921, and his “Bookman’s Day Book,” a day-by-day account of his activities as a literary gadfly, appeared each week in the Sunday “Books” supplement. Rascoe published two of the most positive reviews of One of Ours (1922), one in the Tribune and another in Shadowland magazine, both of which Cather sent to her sister Elsie. He also published an extravagantly positive review of A Lost Lady (1923) in the Tribune. In February 1924, Rascoe invited himself along to Thomas Beer’s luncheon with Cather and reported Cather’s remarks about her work editing a collection of Sarah Orne Jewett’s stories in the “Day Book.” These remarks, including her characterization of Jewett’s work as “remarkably uneven” and her criticism of the “very bad” editorial work done by Jewett’s family, came to the attention of Mary Rice Jewett, Sarah Jewett’s sister and literary executor, and Theodore Jewett Eastman, their nephew, who demanded that Ferris Greenslet of Houghton Mifflin remove Cather from the editorial project. With some difficulty, Cather and Greenslet managed to appease them. In the summer of 1924 the Tribune merged with the New York Herald, and Rascoe was laid off. However, his “Bookman’s Daybook” lived on as a syndicated feature, and he wrote for many magazines and newspapers and wrote several books. In his late career he became a TV critic. He died in New York City.