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 |
Certainly, I am quite willing that you should use an extract3 from "Death Comes for the Archbishop"4, pages 14-51 inclusive. You will, of course, have to get permission from Alfred Knopf5, too.
I agree with you that "a piece of a novel" is nearly always unsatisfactory; but this particular book is scarcely a novel at all. I always see it as a narrative which moves along in a straight line on two white mules6 that do not hurry themselves much.
Your letter was sent to the Grosvenor Hotel7, but that is no longer my address. I am in New York8 so little now that the quickest way to reach me is to address a letter in care of Alfred Knopf. They are very conscientious there about forwarding letters.
Very cordially yours, Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1181.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1181
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Norman Foerster1
- Date letter was written
- May 22, 1933
- Place letter was written
- unknown place2
- Location of original letter
- Willa Cather Collected Materials (MS008), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Foerster's anthology American Poetry and Prose, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1934, includes the first chapter, "The Vicar Apostolic," from Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. This is the only selection of Cather's work in the anthology, and is included under a section on "The Realistic Movement."
The two main protagonists of Death Comes for the Archbishop, Father Latour and Father Vaillant, ride a pair of white mules during their travels through the New Mexico territory.
Grosvenor Hotel (New York City): When Cather and Edith Lewis lost their 5 Bank Street apartment in 1927, they moved into the Grosvenor Hotel, where they continued to live until 1932. The hotel was located at 35 Fifth Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City.
Person Annotations
Foerster, Norman (1887-1972). American literary scholar.
Norman Foerster was born in Pittsburgh, PA; he was one of Cather’s
students when she taught English at Central High School in Pittsburgh. He
went on to receive his A.B. from Harvard in 1910 and his MA from the
University of Wisconsin in 1912. He taught English at the universities of
Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Iowa, as well as at Duke University. Foerster
was a part of the neohumanist movement, along with Irving Babbitt and Paul
Elmer More. He wrote often about the role of higher education as well as
about American literature. His book, Toward Standards
(1930) was dedicated to Cather and to Robert Frost. Cather corresponded with
him occasionally about his work.
Knopf, Alfred A. (1892-1984). President of New York
publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Knopf received his BA from
Columbia University in New York City in 1912 and founded Alfred Knopf, Inc.,
in 1915 with his future wife Blanche Wolf. They married in 1916, and their
son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Cather chose him as her publisher
beginning with Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920) and
One of Ours (1922), partly because she was
dissatisfied with the promotion of her books by Houghton Mifflin but also
because she recognized the high quality of Knopf's books, as well as what
she regarded as his intelligent advertising. Knopf was noted for publishing
the work of leading European and South American writers in translation, as
well as original works. Knopf and Cather’s extensive correspondence
testifies to their mutual professional respect and to what also became an
important personal friendship.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
