Edith Lewis
{{Short description|American magazine editor}}
{{about|the magazine editor|the nurse|Edith Lewis (nurse)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Edith Lewis
| image = Edith Lewis .jpg
| alt =
| caption = Lewis's passport photograph, 1920
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1882|12|22}}
| birth_place = Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1972|08|11|1882|12|22}}
| death_place = New York City, U.S.
| other_names =
| occupation = Magazine editor,
McClure's Magazine
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
| partner = Willa Cather ({{circa}} 1908–1947)
}}
Edith Lewis (December 22, 1882 – August 11, 1972){{cite web|title=Edith Lewis- United States Passport Applications|url=https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QV5B-HKYV|website=FamilySearch|accessdate=19 March 2016}}{{cite web|title=Edith Lewis United States – Social Security Death Index|url=https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JTYK-JTY|website=FamilySearch|accessdate=19 March 2016}} 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.Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living. Ed. John J. Murphy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
Early life
Lewis graduated from Smith College in 1902. Following her graduation, she relocated to her hometown, Lincoln, Nebraska, to teach for a year.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. 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.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.
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."{{cite journal |last1=Homestead |first1=Melissa |title=Willa Cather, Edith Lewis, and Collaboration: TheSouthwestern Novels of the 1920s and Beyond |journal=Studies in the Novel |date=Fall 2013 |volume=45 |issue=3 |pages=408–441 |doi=10.1353/sdn.2013.0015 |s2cid=162345319 |url=https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1184&context=englishfacpubs|url-access=subscription }}
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.Jewell, Andrew. The Willa Cather Archive. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004–2016.
Lewis died on August 11, 1972.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1972/08/12/archives/edith-lewis-friend-of-willa-cather.html |title=Edith Lewis, Friend of Willa Cather |date=August 12, 1972 |newspaper=The New York Times |accessdate=February 7, 2018}} She is buried beside Cather in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
Works
- {{cite book|last1=Lewis|first1=Edith|title=Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record|year=2000|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|location=Lincoln|isbn=9780803279964|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/470082507|oclc=44467311}}
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Willa Cather|state=collapsed}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lewis, Edith}}
Category:American magazine editors
Category:American women magazine editors
Category:20th-century American women journalists
Category:20th-century American journalists
Category:Journalists from Nebraska
Category:People from Lincoln, Nebraska