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 |
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO2
FRED HARVEY. MANAGEMENT File
Cather June 8Dear Mr. Adler1;
I have inserted a short paragraph at the beginning of VII4, part II, to explain the cremation5. Mr. Knopf6 advised it.
I hope the proof corrections will not make much bother. I had to change Esther Singleton’s name because there is an old authorine of that name, and she7 threatened to sue me!
Will you please send me page proofs8 to the above address as soon as they are ready? I will return them to you promptly.
Faithfully Willa CatherInformation about this letter:
- Source File:
- cat.let2563.xml
- Letter identifier
- 2563
- Contents
- Document is one leaf, handwritten on recto only.
- Person to whom letter was written
- Elmer Adler1
- Date letter was written
- June 8 [1926]
- Explanation of conjectured date
-
The year of this letter is established by Cather's reference to correcting the galley proofs of My Mortal Enemy, which were sent to her in New Mexico.
- Place letter was written
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States2
- Location of original letter
- Cather-Knopf Correspondence, The Dobkin Family Collection of Feminism, New York, NY
Individual Annotations
Hotel La Fonda (Santa Fe, NM): Luxury hotel in Santa Fe, NM, which was built in 1922. The hotel was owned by the Atchison, Topeka Santa Fe Railway and managed by Fred Harvey when Cather and Edith Lewis stayed there in the summers of 1925 and 1926.
In My Mortal Enemy, Myra Henshawe is cremated and Oswald Henshawe, her husband, scatters the ashes in the ocean en route to Alaska.
After printers incorporated corrections made on the galley proofs, the typeset text was configured into pages for additional proofreading and correction.
Person Annotations
Adler, Elmer (1884-1962). American printer, publisher,
editor, and author. After moving from Rochester, NY, to New York
City, Adler founded the Pynson Printers in 1922. He also became a partner in
Random House in 1922 and founded the Colophon: A Book
Collector’s Quarterly in 1930. Adler’s Pynson press produced deluxe
limited editions of April Twilights and Other Poems
(1923) and December Night (1933) (an excerpt from Death Comes for the Archbishop). He also designed the
edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop illustrated
by Harold von Schmidt (1927), the title page for My Mortal
Enemy (1926) and the title page and dust jacket for Shadows on the Rock (1931). Adler approached Cather
in 1929 about contributing to a planned series in the Colophon on “Getting into Print”; her essay “My First Novels
(there were two)” finally appeared in 1931. In 1940, Adler established the
Department of Graphic Arts at Princeton University, where he remained until
1952. He then moved to Puerto Rico to establish La Casa del Libro, with
which he was associated until his death.
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.
Singleton, Esther (1865-1930). American writer. Esther Singleton was a prolific writer and anthologist of books on fine and decorative arts, music, and travel. Willa Cather used the name Esther Singleton for a character in the magazine version of My Mortal Enemy (1926). When she was made aware that a writer of that name existed, she apologized and changed the name to Esther Sinclair.
Place Annotations
Work Annotations
My Mortal Enemy (1926) by Willa Cather
