Edith Lewis (1881–1972)

Edith Lewis was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and earned college credits attending the prep school associated with the University of Nebraska before transferring in 1899 to Smith College in Massachusetts. In 1902, she received her bachelor's degree in English and returned to her hometown to teach elementary school. She met Willa Cather the following summer at the home of Sarah Harris, publisher of The Lincoln Courier. Ms. Lewis moved to New York City soon afterward, settling into an apartment on Washington Square in Greenwich Village. In 1906, she applied for a job as an editorial proofreader at McClure's Magazine, and worked there with Ms. Cather for six years. In 1908, the two women moved in together and were domestic partners for nearly 40 years. Ms. Lewis left McClure's in 1915 to become managing editor of Every Week Magazine, where she stayed until the magazine went out of business in 1918. In 1919, she began a long career as an advertising copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson Co. In 1926, Ms. Lewis acquired the land on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada, on which she and Ms. Cather built a summer cottage together. When they lost their apartment 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. During their relationship, Ms. Lewis was closely involved in Cather's creative process, reading and editing her work before publication. She was appointed executor of Ms. Cather's literary estate and a beneficiary of her literary trust upon her death in 1947. Ms. Lewis authorized Canadian scholar and literary critic E.K. Brown as Ms. Cather's first biographer, and published her own memoir, Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record, in 1953.