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.

Sarton, May (1912-1995). American journalist, poet, and author. Born in Wondelgem, Belgium, May Sarton was raised in Cambridge, MA. Sarton first pursued a career as an actress, starting the Associated Actors Theatre in 1933, and then began writing while teaching. Her first collection of poetry was Encounters in April (1937) and her first novel was The Single Hound (1938), which Willa Cather disliked, calling it “utterly artificial and ‘made up’” (#1404). Sarton also wrote several memoirs including Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965), in which she came out as a lesbian.

Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894). Scottish writer. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Stevenson refused to allow his always fragile health to suppress his adventurous spirit. After taking a law degree, he lived and traveled in France, where in 1876 he met his future wife, a married American, Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, in 1876. They were married in 1880, and he produced his best-known works—Treasure Island (1883), Kidnapped (1886) and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)—in the years that followed. In 1888 he set sail for the South Seas, settling on the Samoan island of Upolo in 1890, where he died and is buried. Cather admired Stevenson’s writing, discussing him in her journalism in the 1890s, and cherished her “Thistle Edition” of Stevenson’s collected works, published from 1895-1899 by Scribner’s.

Gissing, George (1857-1903). British writer. Born in Yorkshire, England, Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College (later the University of Manchester) in 1872. However, he was convicted of stealing money, expelled and jailed. He lived for a year (1876-1877) in the U.S., then returned to Britain, writing and earning his living by teaching. He began to publish regularly in the mid-1880s; his New Grub Street (1891) drew on his own experiences as a literary hack. By 1900 some critics placed him with Thomas Hardy and George Meredith as England’s leading novelists.