Guide to Reading Letter Transcriptions
Some of these features are only visible when "plain text" is off.
| 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 |
Your letter3 about the supply of "Antonia"4 in Chicago5 is a distinct shock. The three people who wrote to me
before Christmas were not "investigators", but bone fide
buyers who wanted the book, were unable to get it, and two of them sent me checks,
begging me to send a copy if I had one. I am convinced that they had made an honest
effort to get the book at home before they took that trouble. It must be, as you
say, that they applied to a green salesman, or to several green salesmen. Could the
fact that the buyers called my name rightly, and that clerks in bookstores usually
call it "Kay-thur" have anything to do with it. It is all nonsense that an unusual
name is an advantage in authorship. One had much better b be named Jones. Salesmen in New
York2 and Chicago always correct me when I pronounce my own name.
Mr. Sell6 published a paragraph7 telling people that the name rhymed with
'rather', but if it convinced others, it did not convince the bookstores.
I will read8
Miss Singmaster9's book10 as soon as I have time, be but I'm not very hopeful. Like everybody who has ever done editorial
work on a magazine, I've read scores of her manuscripts. Sometimes they served a
useful purpose and we bought them,; but there was no more surprise in them
than in Kirkman's laundry soap. Even her faults were not interesting. She not only
hadn't a voice, she seemingly had no ear; she droned along. However, I'll read her
book, since you've been kind enough to send it.
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0499.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0499
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only
- Person to whom letter was written
- Roger L. Scaife1
- Date letter was written
- February 21 [1920]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by corresponding letters to Cather from Houghton Mifflin staff.
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Houghton Mifflin Company correspondence and records, 1832-1944 (MSAm1925), Harvard University, Houghton Library, Cambridge, MA
Individual Annotations
On 19 February 1920 Scaife wrote that he had sent a query to their representative in Chicago, who reported copies in stock and orders placed by McClurg and Marshall Field's. He also repeated an anecdote about a Chicago author who had similarly complained several years before that her book was unavailable at McClurg's, but their investigation proved this to be untrue, leading them to conclude that she had asked a new salesperson who did not know the title. Scaife does not imply that Cather had sent an investigator.
There is no extant letter documenting that Cather was sent a copy of Singmaster's novel, but this letter suggests that Scaife had sent a copy of this Houghton Mifflin novel to her, asking her what she thought of it.
Person Annotations
Scaife, Roger Livingston (1875-1951). Head of publicity at Houghton Mifflin. An 1897 graduate of Harvard University, Scaife went to work for Houghton Mifflin in 1898 as assistant to Azaria Smith, head of the publicity department. Scaife subsequently assumed Smith’s position and became a shareholder of the corporation and secretary of the board of directors. In 1910, when Ferris Greenslet became editor in chief of the trade department, Scaife divided his shares with him, and the two presented themselves to authors as partners, with Scaife handling book advertising and format and Greenslet negotiating contracts and supervising editing. Scaife anonymously published three satirical novels with Houghton Mifflin, The Confessions of a Debutante (1913), Cape Codities (1920), and The Reflections of a T.B.M. (1920), and two books of children’s verse under his own name. Cather corresponded primarily with Greenslet about her novels, but in his absence she dealt with Scaife during the production of My Ántonia (1918), and her dissatisfaction with decisions made on his authority contributed to her decision to transfer her publishing business to Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. In 1934 Scaife left Houghton Mifflin to become executive vice president of Little, Brown. He later became the fourth director of Harvard University Press.
Sell, Henry Blackman (1889-1974). American journalist, editor, and advertising executive. Born in Whitewater, WI, Henry Sell established himself as a journalist in Chicago in the teens, working as literary editor of the Chicago Daily News. In 1920 he left Chicago for New York City to become editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar. After several years he left the magazine to work in advertising and became interested in developing packaged foods. During the rest of his long career, he moved back and forth between magazine publishing and food development.
Singmaster, Elsie (1878-1958). American novelist and short story
writer. Born in Schuylkill Haven, PA, Elsie Singmaster’s family
moved frequently when she was a child because of her father’s work as a
Lutheran minister. Of Pennsylvania German descent, he had grown up in
Millerstown, PA, later renamed Macungie. His daughter is best known for her
fiction set in Millerstown, where the family lived briefly and spent
summers. She published her first short story in 1905, graduated from
Radcliffe College in 1907, and published her first novel, Katy Gaumer, in 1915. In 1912, she married Harold Lewars but
continued to publish as Elsie Singmaster. During Cather’s years as an editor
at McClure’s Magazine, three of Singmaster’s stories
appeared in the magazine, and Singmaster ultimately published over 300 short
stories. Cather and Singmaster shared Houghton Mifflin as a publisher, and
Cather became annoyed at the firm’s attempts in 1920 to get her to
read—and perhaps provide blurbs for—Singmaster’s novels.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
"Willa Sibert Cather: To Our Notion the Foremost American Woman Novelist," Chicago Daily News (March 12, 1919) by Henry Blackman Sell
Basil Everman (1920) by Elsie Singmaster
