Edith Lewis Explained

Edith Lewis
Birth Date:	22 December 1882
Birth Place:	Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.
Death Place:	New York City, U.S.
Occupation:	Magazine editor, McClure's Magazine
Partner:	Willa Cather (1908–1947)

Edith Lewis (December 22, 1882 – August 11, 1972)^{[1] [2]} was a magazine editor at McClure's Magazine, the managing editor of Every Week Magazine, and an advertising copywriter at J. Walter Thompson. Lewis was Willa Cather's domestic partner and was named executor of Cather's literary estate in Cather's will. After Cather's death, Lewis published a memoir of Cather in 1953 titled Willa Cather Living.^[3]

Early life

Lewis graduated from Smith College in 1902. Following her graduation, she relocated to her hometown, Lincoln, Nebraska, to teach for a year.^[4] While in Lincoln, she met Willa Cather for the first time at the home of the publisher of the Lincoln Courier, Sarah Harris.

Career

Although historically scholars have painted Lewis, in the context of Willa Cather's career, as a mere copy editor or secretary, recent research has indicated that Lewis had a rich editorial and professional career that had a significant impact upon Cather's creative process.^[5]

According to scholar Melissa Homestead, Lewis shaped Cather's prose alongside one another in a sort of "parallel silent activity in domestic space". At times, their collective editing of a single copy of a work, including written comments, became "so intertwined they are nearly inseparable." Although Cather never dedicated her writing to Lewis, there is an apparent shared ownership between the two of them, informed by their domestic and emotional relationship to one another. Homestead additionally argues that it is time for scholars to "unlock the garret door in our scholarly imaginations to let in the woman with whom (rather than for whom) Cather wrote her fiction."^[6]

Personal life

Lewis shared a home with Willa Cather in New York City for almost 40 years. When Lewis acquired a summer cottage on the island of Grand Manan in New Brunswick, Canada, in 1926, the two shared a summer home there.^[7]

Lewis died on August 11, 1972.^[8] She is buried beside Cather in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.

Works

• Book: Lewis. Edith. Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record. 2000. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln. 9780803279964. 44467311.

Notes and References

1. Web site: Edith Lewis- United States Passport Applications. FamilySearch. 19 March 2016.
2. Web site: Edith Lewis United States – Social Security Death Index. FamilySearch. 19 March 2016.
3. Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living. Ed. John J. Murphy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
4. Homestead, Melissa J., and Anne L. Kauman. "Nebraska, New England, New York: Mapping the Foreground of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis's Creative Partnership." Western American Literature 43 (2008): 41–69.
5. Homestead, Melissa J. "Edith Lewis as Editor, Every Week Magazine, and the Contexts of Cather's Fiction". Willa Cather: A Writer's Worlds. Ed. John J. Murphy, Francoise Palleau-Papin, and Robert Thacker. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010. 325–352.
6. Homestead . Melissa . Willa Cather, Edith Lewis, and Collaboration: TheSouthwestern Novels of the 1920s and Beyond . Studies in the Novel . Fall 2013 . 45 . 3 . 408–441 . 10.1353/sdn.2013.0015 . 162345319 .
7. Jewell, Andrew. The Willa Cather Archive. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004–2016.
8. News: Edith Lewis, Friend of Willa Cather . August 12, 1972 . The New York Times . February 7, 2018.