Undset, Sigrid (1882-1949). Norwegian novelist. Undset is best known for her historical novels set in medieval Norway, the Kristin Lavrandsdatter trilogy (1920-22), set in the fourteenth-century, The Master of Hestvikin tetralogy (1925-27), set in the thirteenth century. Early in her career she wrote realistic novels set in contemporary Norway, including Jenny (1911) about a woman painter. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928 and continued to publish novels, set both in contemporary and historical Norway, that reflected her conversion to Catholicism. Undset persuaded her Norwegian publisher to issue her sister Signe Undset Thomas’s translation of Lucy Gayheart (1935) (the only Norwegian translation of Cather’s work to appear before her death). A strong critic of the German Reich, Undset made a dramatic escape from Norway over the arduous land route when the Nazis invaded Norway in April 1940, events she later described in Return to the Future (1942). When Undset reached New York City in the fall of 1940, Alfred Knopf, Cather and Undset’s mutual publisher, arranged their first meeting. They had long been enthusiastic readers of each other’s novels and were evidently established correspondents, although their extant correspondence begins in 1940. During her exile Undset settled in a residential hotel in Brooklyn Heights, and she and Cather saw each other socially. Cather praised her as “just all a great woman should be - and on a giant scale” (#1541). Undset was an active public critic of the Nazis during her exile. She returned to Norway at the close of the war in 1945 and died there.

Churchill, Jennie Jerome (1854-1921) (“Lady Randolph Spencer”). Anglo-American socialite and writer; Winston Churchill's mother. Born in Brooklyn, NY, a daughter of financier Leonard Jerome and Clara Hall Jerome, Jennie Jerome was educated in New York and Paris. In 1873 Edward, Prince of Wales, introduced her to politician Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill, a younger son of the Duke of Marlborough. They were married in 1874; their elder son Winston Churchill was born later that year. Lord Randolph died in 1895; despite a comparative lack of money, the beautiful and charming Lady Randolph maintained her place in British society, and her knowledge and contacts helped her son in his early career. She also wrote plays, some of which starred Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and her memoirs (1908), and was active in war relief work during the Boer War and World War I. In 1900 she married George Cornwallis-West; they divorced in 1914 and she legally resumed the name of Lady Randolph Churchill. In 1918 she married Montagu Phippen-Porch, and died three years later of complications following a fall and broken ankle.