Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added letters | |
| passage added above the line | passage with added text above |
| passage added on the line | passage with added text inline |
| passage added in the margin | passage with text added in margin |
| handwritten addition to a typewritten letter | typed passage with added handwritten text |
| missing or unreadable text | missing text noted with "[illegible]" |
| uncertain transcriptions | word[?] |
| notes written by someone other than Willa Cather | Note in another's hand |
| printed letterhead text | printed text |
| text printed on postcards, envelopes, etc. | printed text |
| text of date and place stamps | stamped text |
| passage written by Cather on separate enclosure. | written text |
I am held up about illustrations3 for the first article4. That can't be put off any longer, and with the rush at the office to get out Harpers Weekly5 with no increase in the office force, there is no one to do it but me. I have not used all my Boston6 material, so will not lose much time. Doubt whether I can go to Lakewood7 before Thursday. Will write you again.
Hastily W. S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0127.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0127
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto and verso.
- Person to whom letter was written
- S. S. McClure1
- Date letter was written
- [May 26, 1913]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
Letters from Cameron Mackenzie to S. S. McClure about Cather's ghost-writing of McClure's autobiography dated May 22, 1913, and May 24, 1913, suggest that this letter was likely written the following Monday.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- McClure mss., 1865-1949 (LMC 1687), Indiana University, Lilly Library, Bloomington, IN
Individual Annotations
On 22 May 1913, Cameron Mackenzie wrote S.S. McClure that he had authorized Cather to travel to Lakewood, NJ, where McClure was at a sanitarium, and that "tomorrow" he would be discussing with Cather "the scheme of illustration" (presumably for McClure's autobiography, which she was ghostwriting). On 24 May 1913, Mackenzie wrote McClure praising the chapters Cather had written as "splendid" and describing the "matter of illustrations" as "well underway."
Person Annotations
McClure, Samuel Sidney (1857-1949) (“S.S.”). Irish-born
American publisher. McClure immigrated to the U.S. at age nine,
living with his family in Indiana. Despite poverty and the limited education
he had received in Ireland, he graduated from high school and then Knox
College in Illinois. He then moved to Boston, MA, where from 1882 to 1884 he
edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. Despite
opposition from her parents, he married his Knox College classmate Harriet
Hurd in 1883. The couple had four biological children (Eleanor, Bess, Mary,
and Robert), and adopted one (Enrico). In 1884, S.S. started McClure’s
Syndicate, which placed fiction in newspapers across the country. In 1893
with his college classmate John Sanborn Phillips he started McClure's Magazine, which was best-known for the
"muckraking" exposés by writers such as Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens,
but which also published literature. After his cousin H.H. McClure, who
worked for the McClure Syndicate, brought Cather to S.S. McClure’s
attention, McClure, Phillips & Co. brought out Cather’s first book of
fiction, The Troll Garden (1905). When most of the
editorial staff, including Steffens and Tarbell, resigned from McClure’s in 1906, he hired Cather as an editor; she
later became managing editor. After she left her position at McClure’s in 1912 and when S. S. McClure had lost
control of the magazine still bearing his name, Cather ghost wrote his
autobiography (McClure’s serial 1913-1914, book
publication 1914). McClure made repeated—and ultimately
failed—attempts to reestablish himself in journalism and magazine
publishing, often trying to enlist Cather in these enterprises. She almost
went with him to Europe in 1915 to report on the war for the Evening Mail, and she remained personally loyal to
her mercurial and often-irresponsible former employer. He served as the
prototype for Marcus O’Mally, editor of the Outcry,
in her story “Ardessa” (1918), and it has been suggested that Cather modeled
the courtship and marriage between Myra and Oswald Henshaw in My Mortal Enemy (1926) on that of the McClures.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
"My Autobiography by S.S. McClure," McClure's Magazine (October 1913 to May 1914) by Willa Cather
Harpers Weekly
