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.

West, Rebecca (1892-1983). British novelist, journalist, and critic. Born in Kerry, Ireland, to a Scotch mother and Anglo-Irish father, Cicely Isabel Fairfield trained in London as an actress, where she took the name Rebecca West from the heroine of Henrik Ibsen’s play Rosmerhsholm (1886). As a journalist writing for the Freewoman and the Clarion West promoted women’s suffrage and socialist causes and argued against British imperialism. She also became a powerful literary critic, writing reviews for both British and American periodicals. and an important modernist fiction writer. Her first novel, The Return of the Soldier (1918), explored the effect of the trauma of World War I from the perspective of the sister of a combat veteran. Her Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) is considered a masterpiece of British travel writing. In her later life, West abandoned her early radicalism and was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1959. Cather had met West by early 1927, and later that year West positively reviewed Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) for the New York Herald Tribune Books. Cather continued to cultivate West as a critic, ensuring that she got copies of her books, leading to West’s positive review of Shadows on the Rock (1931).

Meissner, Stella Kirker (1873-1949). American teacher. Born in Illinois, Stella Kirker attended the University of Nebraska, where she was a friend of Louise Pound and Minnie DePue. She received her BA in 1892 and her MA in 1895. She taught at Lincoln High School for many years. In the late 1920s she married George L. Meissner, after the death of his wife, Minnie DePue Meissner. Thereafter she lived in Lodi, CA, where she was active in community affairs.