Bokum, Frances Amanda Butcher (1888-1987) (“Fanny”). American newspaper critic and bookstore owner. Born in Fredonia, KS, Butcher moved to Chicago, IL, as a child. She received an A.A. from Lewis Institute in 1908 and a BA from the University of Chicago in 1910. In 1911, Floyd Dell of the Chicago Evening Post assigned her to review Alexander’s Bridge (1912). Cather wrote the anonymous reviewer care of the Post, beginning their correspondence and friendship. From 1913 until her retirement in 1963, Butcher wrote for the Chicago Tribune, becoming literary editor in 1922. She ran Fanny Butcher Books in Chicago from 1919 until 1927, when she sold it to Doubleday. Cather frequently saw Butcher when she changed trains in Chicago and closely followed Butcher’s reviews of her works, often writing to her about them. She also relied on Butcher’s knowledge of the book business and particularly book distribution in the Midwest. Their extant correspondence begins in 1920, although in her memoir Many Lives—One Love (1972), Butcher paraphrases earlier letters. Butcher married Richard Drummond Bokum in 1935.

Ickis, Elizabeth Cather (1915-1978) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Elizabeth and her twin sister Margaret were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Elizabeth moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937 and married Lynn S. Ickis, an electrical engineer, in April 1938. They lived in Cleveland, OH, and had two children, Margaret and John.

Shannon, Margaret Cather (1915-1996) (half of the “twinnies”). Cather’s niece. Margaret and her twin sister Elizabeth were born in Lander, WY, to Roscoe and Meta Cather, and moved with the family to Casper, WY, in 1921. Elizabeth and Margaret both attended the University of Colorado, graduating in 1937, and visited Willa Cather and Edith Lewis on Grand Manan during the summers of 1936 and 1937. In Cather’s later letters to them, she often refers back to their summer visits as a magical time. Margaret moved to Colusa, CA, with her parents in 1937. After she married Richard Shannon in September 1938, she moved with him to Boston, MA, where he earned an MBA from Harvard University in Cambridge. In 1940 they moved to the New York City area, where their first child, Richard, was born in 1943. The Shannons moved to Washington, DC, in 1944, where their daughter Kathryne was born. Cather did not see Margaret again after she left New York, and Margaret’s other three children, Patricia, Margaret, and Elizabeth, were born after Cather’s death. Kathryne and Patricia became caretakers for a large family archive of letters preserved by their mother, which they donated to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as the Roscoe and Meta Cather Collection.