Merores, Margarete Wilhelmine (1881-1959) (“Margaret”). Austrian historian. Born in Vienna, Austria, Margarete Merores was a historian of medieval Italy and published several scholarly books and articles. In the early 1930s she apparently completed a translation of Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) into German and wrote to Cather seeking advice about its publication. It never found a publisher. In 1939, she received refugee status in England and remained there permanently and worked as a private tutor.

Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and One of Ours (1922), partly because she was dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an important personal friendship.

Brandeis, Louis Dembitz (1856-1941). American attorney and Supreme Court Justice. Born in Louisville, KY, to German Jewish parents who fled Austria after the Revolution of 1848, Brandeis was educated in Dresden, Germany, and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1875. In 1879 he and Samuel Warren established the law firm of Warren and Brandeis in Boston, MA. He married Alice Goldmark in 1891, and together they embraced progressive causes, especially labor reform. The National Consumers League, in which Alice’s sisters Pauline and Josephine were active, enlisted Louis Brandeis to argue Muller v. Oregon (1908), a case defending maximum working hours for women workers, before the U.S. Supreme Court; the “Brandeis brief,” consisting primarily of sociological data gathered by the Goldmark sisters rather than legal argument, revolutionized constitutional law. From 1905 to 1913, he battled in court against J.P. Morgan’s attempts to create a railroad monopoly by merging the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad with the Boston & Maine Railroad. President Woodrow Wilson appointed Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916, and he served until 1939. Willa Cather met the Brandeises in 1907-1908 when she was on assignment for McClure’s Magazine and also spent time in the Brandeis home when she made later visits to Annie Fields. She last saw Louis Brandeis in New York City, where he was visiting the Goldmark family, in 1913.

Goldmark, Josephine Clara (1877-1950). American social reformer. Born in Brooklyn, NY, to Polish and Czech Jewish parents whose families fled Austria after the Revolution of 1848, Goldmark earned a BA in English from Bryn Mawr College in 1898; she then studied an additional year and tutored at Barnard College. Her sister Pauline introduced her to Florence Kelley of the National Consumers League, which sparked her interest in what became her life’s work, social research and reform, with an emphasis on working conditions for women and children. Cather met Josephine Goldmark and her sisters Pauline and Alice (who married Louis Dembitz Brandeis and lived in Boston) when she was on assignment in Boston for McClure’s Magazine in 1907-1908. Josephine Goldmark and Cather became lifelong friends, although extant correspondence is scant. Cather admired Goldmark’s book Pilgrims of ’48: One Man’s Part in the Austrian Revolution of 1848, and a Family Migration to America (1930), about the Goldmark, Wehle, Dembitz, and Brandeis families during the Austrian revolution and their lives in the U.S. (Josephine’s mother was a Wehle). In later years she and her sister Pauline lived in Hartsdale, NY. Josephine died in White Plains, NY.