Branch, Anna Hempstead (1875-1937). American poet and settlement worker. An 1897 graduate of Smith College, Branch’s career as a nationally published poet began in 1898, when she won a Century Magazine contest for the best poem by a college graduate. She studied dramaturgy at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, graduating in 1900. She achieved success in New York as a poet and playwright and was active in the Christadora Settlement House, where she created the Poet’s Guild. Houghton Mifflin published three volumes of her poetry, Heart of the Road (1901), The Shoes That Danced (1905), and Rose of the Wind (1910). All feature a pre-Raphaelite-influenced mysticism, as does what is considered her best work, Sonnets from a Lock Box (1929), the last volume of her poems published during her lifetime. Cather may have first met Branch in the home of Annie Adams Fields in Boston, MA.

Fields, Annie Adams (1835-1915). Literary hostess, author, and social reformer. At age 20, Annie Adams married James T. Fields, partner in the Boston publishing house of Ticknor & Fields. Both before and after her husband’s death in 1881, Fields often entertained important American, British, and European authors at her home at 148 Charles Street in Boston, MA. After James’ death, Sarah Orne Jewett, whose books were published by Ticknor & Fields, began sharing Annie’s homes at 148 Charles Street and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA. Cather met Fields in Boston in 1908, a meeting Cather described in "The House on Charles Street," an essay reviewing Memories of a Hostess (a volume of selections from Fields' journals, 1922). A revised version of this essay, retitled "148 Charles Street," appeared in Not Under Forty (1936). After Jewett’s death in 1909, Fields edited The Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett (1911), which included several letters to Cather. Fearing that 148 Charles Street would become a museum after her death, Fields requested that it be torn down.