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 greatly pleased with the Mayflower edition3 of Miss Jewett's4 stories, and thank you cordially for sending them to me. I specially like the paper on which they are printed.
Will you please let me know when you expect Mr. Greenslet5 home6? And please have one copy of "My Antonia"7 mailed to me from the office and charge to my account.3/25/25
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let0777.xml
- Letter identifier
- 0777
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Mr. Hunt1
- Date letter was written
- March 20, 1925
- 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 17 February 1925, Greenslet wrote Cather that he was about to sail for England. On 12 March 1925, Houghton Mifflin informed Cather than Greenslet was not expected back before 25 April 1925.
Person Annotations
Hunt, Mr. Houghton Mifflin employee. This person, who sent an early copy of The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) to Cather, may properly be Miss M. Hunt. Acknowledging receipt of the same volume, Mary Rice Jewett addressed a letter to a Miss Hunt. Also Miss Hunt and Esther Forbes, another Houghton Mifflin employee at the time, were sent to visit Mary Jewett in Maine to gather information for a publicity campaign for the book.
Jewett, Sarah Orne (1849-1909). American short story writer and
novelist. Born in South Berwick, ME, Jewett began sharing homes
in Boston (at 148 Charles Street) and Manchester-on-the-Sea, MA, with Annie
Adams Fields in 1881, while continuing to live in her family home in South
Berwick with her mother and sister part of the year. She was associated
throughout her career with the Atlantic Monthly, and
her best-known work, The Country of the Pointed Firs,
was serialized there in 1896. Like much of her fiction, it focused on rural
and small town New England life. By the time Cather met Jewett at 148
Charles Street in 1908, Jewett had largely ceased writing because of a
spinal concussion she suffered in a 1902 carriage accident. She wrote
important letters of advice to Cather in 1908, criticizing her decision to
write "The Gull's Road" (1908) from the perspective of a male character,
which she called "something of a masquerade" (27 Nov. 1908), and urging her
to give up her editorial work at McClure's Magazine
so she could focus full-time on fiction writing (13 Dec. 1908). After
Jewett's death in South Berwick in 1909, Cather often referred to her and
her advice about writing. Cather edited The Best Stories
of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) for publisher Houghton Mifflin, and in
her preface classed The Country of the Pointed Firs
with Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Nathaniel
Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as one of "three
American books which have the possibility of a long, long life."
Greenslet, Ferris (1875-1959). American editor and writer.
Born in Glens Falls, NY, Ferris Greenslet earned a BA (1897) from
Wesleyan University and a PhD (1900) from Columbia University. He served as
associate editor at the Atlantic Monthly from 1902 to
1907, and married Ella Stoothoff Hulst in 1903; they had two children,
Marguerite (born 1904) and George (born 1906). As an author he specialized
in biography. He became literary editor at Houghton Mifflin, the Boston
publisher of the Atlantic, c. 1908 and was socially
and professionally acquainted with Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett,
who may have introduced him to Cather. He evidently solicited Cather to
submit Alexander’s Bridge (1912), her first published
novel, to Houghton Mifflin. In 1910, when Greenslet became editor in chief
of the trade department, Roger Scaife divided his shares as a director of
the company 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; when Greenslet was absent
from the office, Scaife handled correspondence with Cather. Greenslet became
a director of Houghton Mifflin in 1919 and manager of the trade department
in 1933. Cather left Houghton Mifflin as a publisher for Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., because she became dissatisfied with the production and advertising of
her books. However, she remained on cordial terms with Greenslet and
undertook several projects for him after her departure. Her extant letters
to him constitute one of the largest groups to a single correspondent.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
The Best Stories of Sarah Orne Jewett (1925) by Sarah Orne Jewett; edited by Willa Cather
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
