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 appreciate your kind and friendly letter and am sorry that I can not grant your request. I have already refused to allow Houghton Mifflin (who originally published the book3) to include it in their "College Reader"4, and Alfred Knopf5 to include it in his Borzoi Omnibus6. I have declined an offer from Harcourt Brace, who wished to include it in their forthcoming omnibus7. So you see I have firmly resolved not to put "Antonia" into any omnibus whatsoever. I have no prejudice against omnibuses in general * * * * *
Very cordially yours,Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1877.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1877
- Contents
- Document is likely a reconstruction from Sarah Bloom's stenographic notes made for Cather's executor after her death. It may not precisely reflect the language or complete content of the letter Cather signed and sent. The location of the original letter is unknown. Document is one leaf, typewritten on the recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Miss Shepherd1
- Date letter was written
- 1939
- Place letter was written
- unknown place2
- Location of original letter
- Susan J. and James Rosowski Cather Collection (MS228), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather may have been approached to include part of My Ántonia in Harcourt Brace's 1939 publication, The Revised College Omnibus, edited by James Dow McCallum et al, though the publisher also issued other similar anthologies in the period.
Person Annotations
Shepherd, Miss. No further information is available about this person.
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
My Ántonia (1918) by Willa Cather
The College Reader (1936) ; edited by Robert Morss Lovett and Howard Mumford Jones and
The Borzoi Reader (1936) ; edited by Carl Van Doren
