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 just back from three weeks in the Roosevelt Hospital and a slight operation3. Are
operations ever slight? Even when they deal kindly with their immediate objective,
they seem to knock the rest of you out pretty effectively. I am ashamed to tell you
that I have not read THE PRACTICAL
COGITATOR4, so thoroughly as I mean to do. I have, however, with great
pleasure read the section5 "How to
Compose Your Life". I came upon it on merely opening the book, thought it looked
interesting,- and I found it interesting. For a few weeks to come I shall need
larger type and wider spacing than The Cogitator offers me. When I am going on low
gear I long for
a
theme - and
a
leisurely
development
of
it. Keats6
followed
by7
Freud8 gives me a crick in the neck .! I look forward to a clearer brain for The Cogitator.
By the way, Alfred Knopf9 tells me that he has everywhere heard most flattering things about The Cogitator, and that it is a very live book on the market.
Faithfully yours, Willa CatherP.S. Please ask your business department to send me a statement of all royalties paid to me by Houghton Mifflin since March 1945.
Bramball will doInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1728.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1728
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, typewritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Ferris Greenslet1
- Date letter was written
- February 12, 1946
- 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
According to Cather’s death certificate, which was signed by breast cancer specialist Dr. William Crawford White, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 1945 and had a mastectomy on 16 January 1946.
As Greenslet and Charles Curtis explain in their preface, the book is an "anthology...for the thinker." The first section, which consists of an introductory section followed by twelve titled sub-sections, is "Man in Search of Himself." "How to Compose Your Life" is one of these named sub-sections.
In the introductory section of "Man in Search of Himself," an excerpt of a Keats letter to J.H. Reynolds is followed by an excerpt from Freud titled "Thought Moves out into the World."
Person Annotations
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.
Keats, John (1795-1821). British poet. Born in London, England, to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats, John Keats was educated at the Enfield Academy. Apprenticed to a surgeon in 1811, in 1814 he became a junior house surgeon at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals. Best known as a Romantic lyric poet, during his short life Keats published three volumes of poetry, the first of which was Poems by John Keats (1817). Cather was a Keats enthusiast. She alludes to Keats in her works, including in “A Death in the Desert” (1903). Annie Fields arranged for Cather and George Woodberry to view Amy Lowell’s famous private collection of Keats letters and manuscripts c. 1913, but Lowell refused to allow them to touch the documents (#1595). When Fields died, she bequeathed her bust of Keats to Cather.
Freud, Sigmund (1865-1939). Austrian founder of psychoanalysis.
Born in Moravia, Austria, Sigmund Freud graduated from the Sperl
Gymnasium in 1878 and attended the University of Vienna. In 1885 he began
teaching at the General Hospital in Vienna but soon moved to Paris to study
at the Salpêtriére clinic. While practicing psychology in Vienna, Freud
developed his famous theory of psychoanalysis. Freud’s best-known work is
The Interpretation of Dreams (1899); Aflred A.
Knopf, Inc., published the English translation of Moses
and Monotheism in the U.S. in 1939. Willa Cather was familiar with
Freud’s work but did not give his theories much credence.
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
The Practical Cogitator (1945) by Charles P. Curtis and Ferris Greenslet
