Lewis, Edith Labaree (1881-1972). Magazine editor, advertising copywriter, and Cather's domestic partner. Born in Lincoln, NE, to Henry Euclid Lewis and Lillie Gould Lewis, Edith Lewis attended the preparatory school associated with the University of Nebraska, earning college credits from the University before transferring to Smith College in Northampton, MA, in 1899. She received an A.B. in English from Smith in 1902 and returned home to teach elementary school. She met Willa Cather in the summer of 1903 at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of the Lincoln Courier. Moving to New York City soon afterward, Lewis settled into a studio on Washington Square and found work at the Century Publishing Company. Cather was her guest when she visited the city from Pittsburgh. In 1906, at Cather's suggestion, Lewis applied for a position as an editorial proofreader at McClure's Magazine, and the two women worked together on the McClure's staff for six years. In 1908, they moved into a shared apartment at 82 Washington Place, and then, in 1912, to Five Bank Street. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she stayed until the magazine folded in 1918. In 1919 she began a long career as an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926 Edith Lewis acquired the land on which she and Cather built their cottage on Grand Manan Island. When they lost their apartment on Bank Street to subway construction in 1927, they shared quarters at the Grosvenor Hotel when they were both in New York City. In 1932 they took an apartment at 570 Park Avenue. Throughout their relationship, Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process, reading and editing her work in pre-publication forms. Cather's will appointed Lewis as executor of her literary estate and a beneficiary of her literary trust. Lewis authorized E.K. Brown as Cather's first biographer and published her own memoir of Cather, Willa Cather Living (1953). She remained in their Park Avenue apartment after Cather's death and died there after a long period of illness and invalidism. She is buried at Cather's side in Jaffrey, NH.

Brewster, Earl (1878-1957). Expatriate American painter. Born in Chagrin Falls, OH, Earl Brewster attended the Cleveland Institute of Art for a year before moving to New York City in 1899 to study at the Art Students League and the New York School of Art. He married fellow painter Achsah Barlow in 1910. They immediately moved to Europe, returning to the U.S. only once, in 1923. From 1910 through 1935, Earl and Achsah lived in France (where their daughter Harwood was born in 1912) and Italy (where they met D. H. Lawrence in 1921), while traveling widely in Europe and to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and India. Edith Lewis visited Achsah and Earl in Ravello, Italy, in 1914 and 1920 and in Cyr-sur-Mer, France, in 1930 (with Cather) and 1935. When Earl, Achsah, and Harwood moved to Paris in the early 1920s, they became friend Isabelle McClung Hambourg and Jan Hambourg. Earl had begun studying eastern religions early in his life, including the Vedanta school of Hindu religious philosophy, and he incorporated Buddhist iconography into his paintings. In 1935, the Brewsters moved to the Himalayan region of India, where he died more than two decades later.