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.

Meredith, George (1828-1909). English novelist and poet. The son of a tailor, small family legacies enabled Meredith to acquire some formal education in England and in Germany by the time he was sixteen. His early unhappy marriage informed some of the poetry in Modern Love (1863). His first novel to achieve recognition was The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), followed by Evan Harrington, or, He Would Be a Gentleman (1860). The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885) established his popularity and his reputation as a writer of brilliant romantic and psychological comedies and as a creator of complex, spirited women characters. Many of his later works were written at his home at Box Hill, Surrey. By the 1890s he was widely considered the greatest living British novelist. Cather discussed his work in her early journalism; she was in London when he died and attended his funeral.

Gregory, Lady (1862-1932). Irish writer and folklorist. Isabella Augusta Persse was born and was educated at her family’s estate in County Galway, Ireland. She married Sir William Gregory, retired former governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Member of Parliament for Galway, in 1880. Their only child was killed in World War I. Widowed in 1892, she began collecting and publishing Irish folktales and became associated with members of the Irish literary revival. She met William Butler Yeats in 1896, and with him and others founded the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 and the Abbey Theatre in 1904. She wrote nineteen plays for the theatre, retiring in 1928. Cather met Lady Gregory through critic William Archer on a visit to London in 1908, but there is no evidence they corresponded.

Arliss, George (1868-1946). English stage and film actor. Born in London, England, George Augustus Andrews was educated at Harrow School. He went on the stage at eighteen, taking Arliss as his stage name. After playing supporting roles on the London stage, he went to the U.S. in 1901 with Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s company. Arliss and his wife, actress Florence Montgomery Arliss, remained in the U.S. until the late 1930s. He became a star of the stage, of several silent films, and of sound motion pictures, and was especially identified with the role of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli on stage and screen, receiving the Academy Award for best actor for the sound version of Disraeli. Cather knew the Arlisses socially in New York from around 1910 and apparently corresponded with Florence Arliss.

Gosse, Edmund (1849-1928). English author and critic. Raised in the small protestant sect of the Plymouth Brethren, Edmund Gosse broke sharply with his parents’ faith. Beginning his career in London as assistant librarian at the British Museum, he published poetry and traveled to Denmark and Norway, leading him to publish influential reviews of the work of Henrik Ibsen. An influential critic of literature and visual art, he is best known today for his Father and Son (1907), his memoir of his difficult relationship with his father. He collaborated with Cather’s friend William Archer on translations of Ibsen’s The Master Builder and Hedda Gabler.