Sedgwick, Ellery (1872-1960). American magazine editor. Born in New York City to parents from a distinguished New England family, Ellery Sedgwick graduated from Harvard University in 1894. He was assistant editor of the Youth’s Companion (1896-1899) and then editor of Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly (1900-1906—renamed Leslie’s Monthly then American Illustrated Magazine). He worked from 1906 to 1907 at McClure’s Magazine and briefly as a book editor at D. Appleton and Company; in 1909 he began his long run as editor of the Atlantic Monthly, which he had bought in 1908. Cather evidently first met Sedgwick when they both worked at McClure’s, although she may also have encountered him at the home of Annie Adams Fields in Boston. When Sedgwick wrote to Cather soliciting a review of Memories of a Hostess: A Chronicle of Eminent Friendships, Drawn Chiefly from the Diaries of Mrs. James Fields (1922, edited by MA DeWolfe Howe), she identified the Atlantic as “the only American magazine I read” (#3021). She also published the poem “Poor Marty” (1931) and the essay “A Chance Meeting” (1933) in the Atlantic. Sedgwick’s wife Mabel, whom he married in 1904, died in 1937. He sold the Atlantic in 1939, the same year he married Marjorie Russell. He died in Washington, DC.

Bagger, Eugene Szekeres (1892-after 1948). Hungarian-American writer. Born to Jewish parents in Budapest, Hungary, and educated at the University of Budapest, Bagger emigrated to the U.S. early in the twentieth century, worked at a variety of newspapers and contributed articles on international affairs to a range of periodicals, including Century, the New York Times, and, after reconnecting with his early conversion to Catholicism, the Catholic World. Living both in the U.S. and Europe throughout his writing life, Bagger is the author of several books, including Emminent Europeans (1922) and The Heathen are Wrong: An Impersonal Autobiography (1941).