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.

Jewett, Mary Rice (1847-1930). Sarah Orne Jewett’s sister. Born in Exeter, NH, to Dr. Theodore Herman Jewett and Caroline Frances Perry Jewett, Mary was the older sister of Sarah Orne Jewett. They both attended Berwick Academy in Berwick, ME, and as adults they continued to live together in the family home in South Berwick, where Mary was active in a local women’s club and charitable work. On Sarah’s death, Mary and Annie Adams Fields became co-executors of Sarah’s literary estate. Cather’s friendship with Mary seems to date primarily from this period after Sarah’s death, and Cather made several visits to Mary at the Jewett family home in Maine. In 1924, with Mary Jewett’s approval, Ferris Greenslet of Houghton Mifflin asked Cather to select and write an introduction to Sarah Jewett’s stories. Shortly thereafter, Burton Rascoe reported critical remarks by Cather about Sarah Jewett’s works and the Jewett family in his “Bookman’s Day Book” column in the New York Tribune. Mary read these remarks as reprinted in the Boston Transcript, was offended, and sought to have Cather removed as editor of her sister’s works. However, Cather and Greenslet persuaded her to reverse this decision (Cather’s letters pleading her case have not been located). Mary Jewett died in South Berwick, and her nephew Theodore Jewett Eastman succeeded to the executorship of Sarah Jewett’s literary estate.