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| Textual Feature | Appearance |
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| 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 |
NOV 22 1922
Filed by AK Tuesday Dear Mr. Knopf1:
It surely does help one along to publish with people who can like a thing for what
it
has got, and not just feel nervous and anxious
because it hasn't the Rex Beach4 quality—as
nice Ferris Greenslet5
always felt. If it was "Western" then it ought to be
Rex Beachy and rough-house. He never saw what was
there, only what wasn't, and whistled to keep up his courage. What I want to do is
to find a few qualities, a few perfumes, that haven't been exactly named and defined
yet. And if I have a publisher who is interested in new tastes and smells, I can go
a good way toward finding them. This story6 is an
example of what I mean; it's a little; lawless un-machine made thing—not very good
construction, but the woman7
loves lives—that's all I want. I don't care about the frame work—I'll make any kind
of net that will get, and hold, her alive.
Of course, if you can get serial
publication8, I would like it because of the money. The more expert
personal service I can afford to pay for, the more I can write. If I can find and
afford a really competent secretary, that will help a great deal. On the other hand,
I don't want want to delay publication too long. I
am beginning to be awfully weary of the hoot-owl legend that it takes me three
years to write a book. I've no drive to do stunts, but I don't wish to get into a
three-year habit. It depends on the kind of book. I think you had better use your
best judgment about serialization. Why not offer it to someone who will pay well and
see if he'll make an offer9? NUMBER FIVE BANK
STREET If we had an offer, we could decide. I confess to a shudder where
the magazines are concerned. But serialization is supposed to be good advertising,
isn't it, as well as good pay? You will be leaving tomorrow, but perhaps I can
manage to talk this over with Mrs. Knopf10
before I go11.
The news about "One of Ours"12 is simply splendid!
Information about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2542.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2542
- Contents
- Document is two leaves, handwritten on recto and verso of first leaf and recto only of second leaf.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Alfred A. Knopf1
- Date letter was written
- [November 21, 1922]
- Place letter was written
- New York, New York, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
5 Bank Street (New York City): The apartment Cather shared with Edith Lewis beginning in 1912, located in Greenwich Village in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Subway construction forced Cather and Lewis to relocate in 1927.
Marian Forrester, the title character.
A Lost Lady was serialized in the April, May, and June 1923 numbers of the Century.
She accepted a $2,000 offer from the Century magazine (see #0660).
Cather left for Red Cloud, NE, on 29 November 1922. She had intended to leave earlier, but was delayed because of illness.
Person Annotations
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.
Beach, Rex (1877-1949). American novelist. Born in Michigan
and reared in Florida, Beach was educated at Rollins College and studied law
in Chicago. In 1900 he joined the gold rush to the Klondike. His five years
of prospecting were unsuccessful, but he drew on his experiences in Alaska
in his early fiction. His first novel, The Spoilers
(1906), and several others set in Alaska or in the West, were best-sellers
and made into action plays and films. Cather disliked Beach’s work, which
appeared occasionally in McClure’s Magazine, and felt
pressure in her early career to make her novels of the West more like his.
There is no evidence that Cather and Beach ever met.
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.
Knopf, Blanche Wolf (1894-1966). Vice President of New York
publisher Alfred Knopf, Inc. Blanche Wolf founded Alfred Knopf,
Inc., in 1915 with her future husband Alfred Knopf. They married in 1916 and
their son Alfred “Pat” Knopf was born in 1918. Active in the business
throughout her life, Blanche Knopf recruited a number of prominent European
and Latin American writers to the Knopf list (in translation) by traveling
to meet them. In recognition of her work with writers such as Jean-Paul
Sartre and Albert Camus, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honor in
1949. She became president of Alfred Knopf, Inc., in 1957 when her husband
became chairman. Through her work in the publishing house she also promoted
writers of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Hughes. Cather’s letters
to Knopf focus primarily on business but the two also became friends.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
A Lost Lady (1923) by Willa Cather
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
