Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and One of Ours (1922), partly because she was dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an important personal friendship.

Beal, Agnes (1893-after 1940) (“Aggie”). Grand Manan resident. Born in New Brunswick, Canada, probably on the island of Grand Manan, Agnes married Ralph Beal around 1914; they had three children by 1921. Cather and Edith Lewis employed Aggie Beal to cook meals and clean the Grand Manan cottage which they built in 1927 and first occupied in 1928.

Mann, Thomas (1875-1955). German author. Born in Lübeck, Germany, to Johann Heinrich Mann and Julia da Silva Bruhns Mann, Thomas Mann first worked as a clerk for a Munich insurance company and on the editorial staff of Simplicissimus, a satirical weekly. In 1898 he published his first novel, Little Herr Friedemann. His other novels include Buddenbrooks (1901), Death in Venice (1912), and The Beloved Returns (1939). Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, and in the U.S. he was published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Cather confessed she found Mann’s Magic Mountain (1924) “dull,” although she did enjoy Joseph in Egypt (1936), part of his tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers (1933-1943) (#1331). Her appreciation of first two volumes of the tetralogy, “Joseph and His Brothers,” appeared in a symposium on Mann’s work in the Saturday Review of Literature in 1936 and appeared soon after in her collection Not Under Forty (1936).

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.