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 |
Annex ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY, N.H.2 AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR October 16th My Dear Fanny1;
I was so glad to get your card from Quebec4 when I was at Grand Manan5.
Apropos of this little book of essays6 coming out this
fall, I don't want you to think I have been seduced by
German flattery, or that I am so eager to please my publisher7 that I lie to sell his books for him. You know that I
found The
The Shattuck Inn
Annex
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY,
N.H.
AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR
Magic
Mountain8 as dull as you did. But Mann9's Biblical
trilogy10 seems to me really a great work. I read the two translated
volumes twice, for pleasure, before I ever thought of writing about them. Then a
third time when I decided I did want to write11 about
them. I so seldom get a new book that carries me into a new world. And the charm of
it, to me,
The Shattuck Inn
Annex
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR
200 GUESTS
ALL MODERN
CONVENIENCES
AT THE FOOT OF MONADNOCK MOUNTAIN
JAFFREY,
N.H.
AMERICAN PLAN
OPEN ALL THE YEAR is
that it carried me back into the oldest world of all. It seems to me absolutely in
the spirit of the Bible12 account, and quite wonderful
in its interpretation of Jacob. You may not at all agree with me, but I don't want
you to think my admiration of the book was in any way paid for.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1331.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1331
- Contents
- Document is three leaves, handwritten on recto of each leaf only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Fanny Butcher1
- Date letter was written
- October 16 [1936]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's reference to the imminent publication of Not Under Forty.
- Place letter was written
- Jaffrey, New Hampshire, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Fanny Butcher Papers, 1830-1984 (Midwest MS Butcher), Newberry Library, Chicago, IL
Individual Annotations
Shattuck Inn (Jaffrey, NH): Hotel built in 1910 in Jaffrey, N,H owned and operated by E. C. Shattuck until his death in February 1933, when operation was taken over by his daughter, Eleanor Shattuck Austermann, and her husband George Austermann. Cather stayed at the Shattuck Inn many times, often with Edith Lewis, finding it a useful place to work. In 1947, Cather wrote of the Shattuck Inn: “I have never found any place where I could work in such peace and happiness as in the little rooms up in the top of the Shattuck Inn” (#1748).
Person Annotations
Bokum, Frances Amanda Butcher (1888-1987) (“Fanny”).
American newspaper critic and bookstore owner. Born in Fredonia,
KS, Butcher moved to Chicago, IL, as a child. She received an A.A. from
Lewis Institute in 1908 and a BA from the University of Chicago in 1910. In
1911, Floyd Dell of the Chicago Evening Post assigned
her to review Alexander’s Bridge (1912). Cather wrote
the anonymous reviewer care of the Post, beginning
their correspondence and friendship. From 1913 until her retirement in 1963,
Butcher wrote for the Chicago Tribune, becoming
literary editor in 1922. She ran Fanny Butcher Books in Chicago from 1919
until 1927, when she sold it to Doubleday. Cather frequently saw Butcher
when she changed trains in Chicago and closely followed Butcher’s reviews of
her works, often writing to her about them. She also relied on Butcher’s
knowledge of the book business and particularly book distribution in the
Midwest. Their extant correspondence begins in 1920, although in her memoir
Many Lives—One Love (1972), Butcher
paraphrases earlier letters. Butcher married Richard Drummond Bokum in 1935.
Butler, Nicholas Murray (1862-1947). American educator and diplomat.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Butler studied at Columbia
University, earning his PhD in 1884 at age twenty-two and joining the
philosophy department in 1885. In 1887 he co-founded what would become
Teachers College, Columbia University, and in 1902 became president of the
university, serving until his retirement in 1945. Active in Republican
politics and in international affairs, he worked with the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, sharing with Jane Addams the 1931 Nobel Peace
Prize. Columbia conferred an honorary degree on Cather in 1928, and she and
Butler kept in occasional touch thereafter; she wrote that she was in accord
with his public statements on world affairs. Butler was also president of
the American Academy of Arts and Letters when Cather was elected to it in
1938.
Mann, Thomas (1875-1955). German author. Born in Lübeck,
Germany, to Johann Heinrich Mann and Julia da Silva Bruhns Mann, Thomas Mann
first worked as a clerk for a Munich insurance company and on the editorial
staff of Simplicissimus, a satirical weekly. In 1898
he published his first novel, Little Herr Friedemann.
His other novels include Buddenbrooks (1901), Death in Venice (1912), and The
Beloved Returns (1939). Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1929, and in the U.S. he was published by Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc. Cather confessed she found Mann’s Magic Mountain
(1924) “dull,” although she did enjoy Joseph in Egypt
(1936), part of his tetralogy Joseph and His Brothers
(1933-1943) (#1331). Her appreciation of first two volumes of the tetralogy,
“Joseph and His Brothers,” appeared in a symposium on Mann’s work in the Saturday Review of Literature in 1936 and appeared
soon after in her collection Not Under Forty (1936).
Place Annotations
Grand Manan, New Brunswick, CanadaCather and Edith
Lewis frequently vacationed on Grand Manan Island during the summer and
early fall for about twenty years, beginning in 1922. For the first few
years, they stayed at the Inn at Whale Cove, a collection of cottages with a
main house operated by Sarah Jacobus. Cather and Lewis rented Orchardside
Cottage from Jacobus until they had their own cottage built. In 1926, Lewis
acquired land on Grand Manan, and construction was completed in 1928. Cather
and Lewis returned to this cottage almost every summer until
1940.
Work Annotations
Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
The Magic Mountain (1924) by Thomas Mann
Joseph and His Brothers (1933 to 1944) by Thomas Mann
"Joseph and His Brothers," Not Under Forty (1936) by Willa Cather
The Bible
