Program

Research Programs: Fellowships

Period of Performance

9/1/2018 - 8/31/2019

Funding Totals

$50,400.00 (approved)
$50,400.00 (awarded)


The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis

FAIN: FEL-257166-18

Melissa J. Homestead
University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Lincoln, NE 68503-2427)

Completion of a book-length study of the personal and professional relationship of Willa Cather and Edith Lewis.

I am applying for support to complete a a biographical study of the relationship between American novelist Willa Cather and Edith Lewis, a magazine editor and advertising copywriter with whom Cather shared a home in New York City for 38 years. Lewis's professional expertise allowed her to act behind the scenes as Cather's editor, making significant changes to her prose in typescript, and to advise Cather on the management of her public persona. Their relationship was also social, familial, and domestic--they shared a home, networks of friends, and social relationships with each other's biological families. I argue that this "creative partnership," which combined the personal and the professional, enabled Cather's emergence as a major novelist.





Associated Products

The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather & Edith Lewis' (Book)
Title: The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership of Willa Cather & Edith Lewis'
Author: Melissa J. Homestead
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://academic.oup.com/book/33539
Primary URL Description: Publisher website
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780190652906