American magazine editor
Edith Lewis (December 22, 1882 – August 11, 1972) 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".
Early life.
Lewis graduated from Smith College in 1902. Following her graduation, she relocated to her hometown, Lincoln, Nebraska, to teach for a year. 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.
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."
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.
Lewis died on August 11, 1972. She is buried beside Cather in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
References.
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