Hendrick, Burton Jesse (1870-1949). American magazine writer, editor, and biographer. Hendrick graduated from Yale in 1895 and worked as a newspaper journalist until 1905, when he became a staff writer at McClure’s Magazine. Cather blamed him for errors in the first serialized installment in McClure’s of a biographical exposé of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. In 1913 Hendrick became associate editor of the World’s Work, a public affairs magazine founded by Walter Hines Page. Having won the Pulitzer Prize in biography as co-author of Victory at Sea (1921) and author of The Life and Letters of Walter Hines Page (1922), he left the magazine in 1927 to pursue writing biographies and histories, winning a third Pulitzer for a follow-up Page biography. Doubleday, Page, and Company, of which Walter Page was a partner, published all of Hendrick’s books.

Woodbury, Josephine Curtis Battles (1850-1930). American Christian Scientist leader. Born in Massachusetts, daughter of Edwin Battles and Josephine Curtis Battles, the younger Josephine Battles married civil engineer Edward Franklin Woodbury; they had three children, although she claimed that her youngest child was born by immaculate conception. Cured by Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science of what was thought to be an incurable illness, Josephine Woodbury became an early advocate of the new religion, becoming one of its more charismatic leaders. However, influenced by Phineas Quimby’s writings, she turned against Eddy and was expelled from the Christian Science Church in 1896; she taught her own version of mental healing to some disciples. In 1899 she sued Eddy and her associates for libel, retaining lawyer Frederick Peabody to prosecute her case. She lost the suit in 1901. Thereafter she spent much of her time abroad and died in France. Cather learned about Woodbury while researching the Mary Baker Eddy articles.