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 |
Here is a comic Valentine in the shape of some verses that Ella Golden3 wrote about Barandon4. She says she will be very careful not let the poor man see them for fear of hurting his feelings. But I'm sending them to you because she has got his dialect perfectly.
Willa S. C.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0036.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0036
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Helen Hiller Seibel1
- Date letter was written
- [February 1897 to 1900]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
This letter seems to have been written around Valentine's Day when Cather was living in Pittsburgh, dating it in February of 1897 to 1900.
- Place letter was written
- Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States2
- Location of original letter
- WCPM Collection, National Willa Cather Center, Red Cloud, NE
Person Annotations
Seibel, Helen Hiller (1873-1971). Cather’s Pittsburgh friend.
Born in Pennsylvania to German immigrant parents, Helen Hiller
married George Seibel on 6 September 1894. Their one child, Erna, was born
in 1897. Cather met the couple through George Seibel’s work for the Home Monthly, which Cather was editing. Soon the
three were meeting frequently at the Seibel home, studying and translating
French and German literature. Cather read her own poetry and short stories
to them as well. The Seibel house at 114 S. 17th Street on Pittsburgh’s
South Side served as the model for the home of Alfred Engelhardt and his
uncle in “Double Birthday” (1925).
Golden, Ella (1856-c. 1920). Cather’s Pittsburgh acquaintance. Born in Indiana, Ella married German immigrant William Golden in 1878; they had six children, of whom five survived to adulthood. In the early 1880s the family moved to Allegheny City, near Pittsburgh, PA, where William Golden became manager of a printing company. Cather probably knew the Goldens through her connections with various Pittsburgh periodicals.
Barandon, John. No further information is available about this person.
Place Annotations
