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 |
Thank you so much for the interview with Mr.
Jordan3 in the Cleveland4
paper5. That's the kind of thing that pleases me and
that I never see. I want to mean something to men who deal with realities, not to
the meek- souled[?] race of men who review books
for a living. Your Cleveland bookseller wereis the only one who was given
the proofs of Claude6 to read. He wrote Knopf7 a perfectly stunning letter and ordered 250
copies—He has never ordered more than 100 at a time from him before. I think you
must have done some missionary work for me in Cleveland.
I'm still in bed8 with my friend. Such a bore to be tied up: But my back is better.
W.Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let1986.xml
- Letter identifier
- 1986
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elsie Cather1
- Date letter was written
- [1922]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The reference to orders of One of Ours suggests this letter was written in months before its publication on 8 September 1922.
- Place letter was written
- unknown place2
- Location of original letter
- Philip L. and Helen Cather Southwick Collection (MS077), University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Archives & Special Collections, Lincoln, NE
Individual Annotations
Cather apparently suffered from dysmenorrhea and/or menorrhagia.
Person Annotations
Cather, Elsie Margaret (1890-1964) (“Bobbie”). Cather’s
sister. Born in Red Cloud, NE, shortly before Willa Cather
graduated from high school, Elsie attended the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln from 1908 to 1910, before transferring to Smith College, in
Northampton, MA, from which she graduated with an A.B. in English and Latin
in 1912. She undertook graduate study at the University of Nebraska in 1914
and in 1916 received her A.M. with a major in philosophy and a minor in
English. At both the undergraduate and the graduate level at Nebraska, she
studied under Louise Pound. She began a career in high school teaching in
1912, when she took a position in Lander, WY, where her brother Roscoe then
lived with his family. She also taught in Albuquerque, NM; Corning, IA;
Cleveland, OH; and briefly Red Cloud, when illness in the family brought her
home. Her longest tenure as a teacher was at Lincoln (NE) High School, where
she began teaching in 1920, with Olivia Pound and Mariel Gere as colleagues.
Willa Cather's expectation that Elsie be responsible for aging family and
friends and for legal affairs after their parents' deaths sometimes brought
the sisters into conflict. Elsie Cather retired from Lincoln High School in
1942. She died in Lincoln.
Mr. Jordan. American bookseller. Sometime around the publication of One of Ours (1922), a bookseller Cather identifies as “Mr. Jordan,” was interviewed by a Cleveland newspaper. No further information is known 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
Cleveland Plain Dealer
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
